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It’s not that easy to find a printer for home use that is network-ready. For some or other reason, most printers still cater for only a USB connection. That means a single workstation is the master and has to be on all the time or have a share. It’s not the ideal solution. By the way: the printer cable is never included! Remember to buy the cheapest one you can and don’t be fooled by the salesperson bundling a cable at a special price. Computer resellers make more margin on the cable and are only too happy to get an eager customer to pay an astronomical price for a simple USB cable…

In any case, I wanted a slim colour laser printer with network connectivity. I had my eye on a particular Samsung model, but alas: Samsung is very picky when it comes to importing variants of one model. You’d think it would simplify matters if all had both USB and network instead of the xxx model having only USB and the xxxN model having USB and Ethernet ports. Obviously, my misunderstanding of this principle is one reason I’m not in the printer business! I finally settled on the CLP350N.

Again, I’ve chosen Samsung. Primarily, I settled on this unit because it seems to enjoy a lot of support on various platforms. I now run three operating systems: Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. So, I need a device that is capable of performing properly on all three. I trust I’ve done my homework diligently! Time and a few messed-up printouts will tell.

The CLP350 is a cinch to install and setup: un-paste some sticky tape that keeps the primary flaps stuck down, then pull out four orange tabs that protect the toner cartridge entry to the drum. There are four toner cartridges: cyan, magenta and yellow in smaller cases and one larger black cartridge. These easily slot into place at the front of the printer and are turned a slight bit to the right to lock them in place. The only other thing to do is load paper into the tray and connect power and Ethernet cables. The initial startup takes a few minutes during which time a page is printed to indicate that all toner cartridges have been correctly installed. The control panel is simplistic: one button and a few status LED‘s. The unit is reasonably unobtrusive and looks good.

Even though there is support for multiple operating systems, the IP address of the printer has to be set by running a Windows program. I set a static IP address for my network, then proceeded to load the driver onto G2S running Vista. The driver installation is easy: click and go. With the printer available on the network, there’s no issue in finding and selecting it. The first test page in full colour looks good: the CLP350N does roughly 5ppm when printing colour and about 19ppm when printing black and white. The maximum resolution is 2400×600 dpi.

The real test came when I installed the Linux driver for the printer on katana. Thankfully, no nasty surprises! A slight modification to the overall wizard – I had to exit and run the driver configuration tool manually. The automated installer couldn’t detect the printer. Most importantly, the printer quality and control from Mandriva is excellent from what I can see, having printed a few pages from different applications. Last installation: get the driver onto MacBook. That’ll have to wait until tomorrow.

I am pleased with my choice. I’ll give the printer a bit of a workout over the next week or so. Since it’s on the network and available wirelessly, I’m hoping that getting printed output from any device and application will be seamless and hassle-free.

This device caught my attention and looks almost perfect. XPERIA X1 sounds like a skunk works stealth fighter ready to launch from Area 51. Instead, it’s a converged device with a rather elegant sliding keyboard beneath the screen.

The XPERIA X1 as all the usual features you’d expect from a modern converged device. There’s Bluetooth, WLAN and HSDPA and various other connectivity features. Plug a USB thumb drive into it and you’ll be able to browse the contents. All the expected PIM features and their synchronisation find a place, as does the 3.2MP camera. A nice navigational aid is the ability to see up to nine thumbnails of running applications on the home screen.

The screen is touch-sensitive and the orientation of the display changes depending on whether or not the keyboard has been slid out. 400MB of memory is on-board and additional storage may be added by slotting in a MicroSD card.

I was really excited when I saw the X1. There’s little not to like and it would be a great replacement for an E90. Except that it runs Windows Mobile. And I’m not so sure I want to trade Symbian for that…

The full specifications may be found here.

Thankfully, we have Android to look forward to.

According to GPS And Co, Asus is preparing to launch a new Windows Mobile smartphone that borrows many design cues from Nokia‘s E90. The Asus M930W has a 520MHz Marvel processor, 128MB of RAM and 265MB of ROM and is HSDPA-capable. The camera shoots at 3MP and the MicroSD slot can read memory cards up to 32GB. The usual connectivity options include wireless LAN, Bluetooth and USB.

I’m not sure whether the images below are mock-ups or taken of the real thing. In the closed state, the M930W is usable as a phone and probably provides access to applications.

When opened up, the larger keyboard and (hopefully) larger screen is available.

GPS And Co seems to think that the device may be available early on in 2008. Maybe this will be one of the announcements at the upcoming 3GSM conference in Barcelona. The other highly anticipated announcement is an actual Google phone running Android. A prototype of that device has been captured by the team at Gizmodo. Seems like it could be an interesting year for gadgets

The HP iPAQ 514 Voice Messenger is a lightweight Windows Mobile 6-based smartphone. It seems to have easily supplanted Mel‘s rather basic Nokia 1600 and is in use primarily as a phone. That’s what it’s supposed to be used for, isn’t it? Given its size and weight, the transition has been easy for someone who is not accustomed to using a mini computer. The fact that the battery life is decent – first charge to last bar indicated on the battery indictator: 5 days, is certainly a plus. Another bonus is the ability to charge via USB, definitely something I miss on my E90.

But being a smartphone, there’s obviously far more to it than just basic telephony. The iPAQ 514 is fully-featured and provides a number of connectivity options: wireless LAN, Bluetooth and USB 2.0 connectivity augments the cellular network’s EDGE connectivity. The screen is easily readable, though the resolution is somewhat disappointing. The inclusion of a 1.3MP camera is a bit of waste, but it’s well-suited to the screen. For emergencies it will do, but at a time when 7MP cameras are available for less than ZAR 1000, it is no longer acceptable to have such a low resolution camera on any device. That’s a minor gripe. The unit sports a keypad that is comfortable to use, with dedicated softkeys, dedicated phone answer and reject keys and the usual directional keypad with a centre select button. A home key takes you to the home screen, the back button does double duty as a delete key and to move to the previous menu or screen. Quite handy.

The home screen maintains a list of recently run or currently running applications, all accessible from the topmost section of the screen. The usual content fills out the home screen. We’ve even added an item for HandyWeather in the meantime.

The LOOX T830 is the last Windows Mobile device we’ll get to see from Fujitsu-Siemens. In fact, that’s it: no more PDA’s or GPS navigation devices will be manufactured by the company. Citing the prevalence of smartphones that contain both PDA and navigation as standard features, Fujitsu-Siemens also indicates low sales volumes in the PDA segment as a reason for its exit. The end of this year marks the death of the Pocket LOOX brand.

Personally, I think FSC had a bit of a bomb in the shape of the T830. Underpowered, buggy and at least a year late to market, it’s no wonder that they’ve been caught out. Nokia and HTC have moved along with a strong product portfolio and decent devices that actually ship on time and work most of the time.

I’ll hang on to my LOOX 720 now, simply because it’s one of the best PDA’s I’ve ever used and owned. A nice piece for a museum, maybe?

via Channelpartner

Spb Mobile Shell is undoubtedly one of my favourite Windows Mobile applications. The Now Screen provides a great overview of network status, battery level, time, upcoming appointments and a weather report. The ability to single-handedly find contacts and dial frequently-used numbers is extremely handy. The just-release 1.5 version is perhaps more cosmetic in nature, but there are a fair number of under-the-skin additions that have taken place.

In terms of the cosmetic, the installation program provides the choice of using the classic or professional Now Screen. Considering myself somewhat more professional than classic, the choice was easily made…

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Egress is an application I use daily. It’s basically nothing more than an aggregator for RSS feeds and provides the ability to schedule updates and even download podcasts. The main bugbear for me was the fact that navigation between channels was not possible with the soft keys on my JAMin. Though scrolling from one item to the other worked well, there was not other way to move to a different channel than using the stylus to select it. That’s been fixed in the new release 3.20, and it makes browsing channels and individual items really easy and convenient.

The soft keys are configured to permit a refresh of channels and to gain quick access to the Tools menu. Use the up and down key to move from one item to the other, and the left and right keys on the directional keypad to move to the next or previous channel. It’s amazing how such a small addition is able to boost the usability of the application.

A second issue I’ve had with Egress is its inability to cleanly terminate connections, either by force or when a network connection is no longer available. Often, the application would take forever to shutdown, or require the device to be soft reset. From my brief tests with the new version, it seems as though this behaviour has been minimized. The thread exits quicker now, and background updates to channels seem to work seamlessly.

If you’re a registered user, head on over to GarishKernels for a free upgrade. If you’re in the market for a good RSS reader for a Windows Mobile device, try this one out.

Hudson Mobile is a name I have not come across in the Windows Mobile software world. Their Phone Dashboard for Windows Mobile devices is a fairly useful application to keep track of mobile phone usage. Designed to provide reporting and track how much airtime you have utilized, Phone Dashboard is yet another Today screen plug-in. With all these plug-ins, we’ll need 17″ screens on PDA’s soon!

The Today screen plug-in rolls through various status displays, indicating network provider, used minutes and similar information. Phone Dashboard attempts to predict your usage based on historical information to give a projected usage indication.

The icons on the panel provide access to various reports and configuration screens. Initially, it is necessary to select what one wishes to view and also to provide the application with details regarding free, peak and off peak minutes, in addition to other details regarding your contract. The settings are easy to navigate and divided by category into a number of separate tabs.

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If there’s one application I can’t do without on my JAMin, it’s a decent file manager. The standard File Explorer on Windows Mobile is usable, but anything more than a copy and paste reaches the limits of that application. For a long time, I’ve relied on Resco’s Explorer. They have just released the updated Resco Explorer 2007.

To be honest, nothing much has changed. As with many updated releases of popular software titles for the Windows Mobile platform, highlights generally exist beneath the exterior. The same look and feel is still there, but with a couple of useful enhancements.

I had a few minutes with the soon-to-be-released Blackberry 8800. Enough to snap a photo or two…

Let me break the news this way: I wasn’t too impressed with the Pearl 8100. Thin, lightweight and capable, yet it falls far short in terms of application support and general functionality. For my purposes at least, I need access to wireless networks and the ability to load a number of varied applications. The 8800 is simply a Peal with a bigger face – nothing much has changed in terms of the overall package.