Thursday, February 25, 2010

Plus

Ever since Verizon got the Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus, I've been wanting to try one out and see what all of the fuss is about.

Yesterday, I stopped by my local Verizon store and got to play with each of them.

And?

Well, playing with a phone in-store is totally differant than taking it home with you. You just simply can't try it out properly. It's tied down to the display, you're mot making calls and sending texts.
You don't dare log-in to any of your accounts.

So you play with what's there.

First, both phones were dirty. Covered with fingerprints and what not.
They were also rather sluggish. Probably hadn't been restarted recently.

So I told both the Pre and Pixi to update all of their apps, and then gave them a good restart.

Turns out the Pixi was wirelessly providing the store's music via Pandora. The store went silent--oops.

I didn't actually talk to any employees, so I can't say anything about their knowledge.

But the thing I was most curious about was the lack of a center button.
I found myself acting as if it was there. I knew where it should be, and my swipes took that into account.
And tapping on that line of light worked just as it should.

The thing I found odd was the keyboard.
I've had my Sprint Pre since Day 1. I'm well aware of how to use the keyboard, but the Pre Plus semed to trip me up a bit. Not sure what was going on there.


Bottom line? I'll stick with Sprint. While I'm sure the Plus memory would be nice at times, it's not worth the hassel of switching providers.


--Sent from my Palm Pre

Saturday, February 20, 2010

How my Prē really impressed me yesterday

Thursday evening, I Doctored (think "reformatted") my Pre.
Don't worry, there was nothing wrong with it. I had my reasons.

Problem is, I think I told my Pre that it was a Pixi. Not recommended.

I couldn't get my Pre to boot. I couldn't get webOS Doctor to recognize the device to reformat it again.

Oops.

Eventually, I managed to get the phone working.

I still wasn't sure if my Pre knew what it was, so I Doctored it again Friday morning.

About this time, I realized that the home internet was down. Nice.

I needed that internet.

Since my Pre was nice and fresh, I didn't have any of my fancy homebrew stuff on it. Like a tethering program.

I didn't even have Preware. (Preware is what I use to install all of my homebrew apps, patches, and themes.)

Now, I normally use webOSQuickInstall (on my laptop) to install Preware, but it has to download it first.

No internet, no download.

But.

I had the files and patches for FreeTether on my laptop.

But I needed other things installed for WOSQI to do modding.

But.

I recalled that there was another way to install it Preware.

I googled "Preware", downloaded a .jar file onto my Pre.
Moved it to my desktop via USB.
And then ran the installer.

Then I used Preware to install the two needed packages on my Pre, WOSQI was then able to patch my Pre for tethering, 

and then my laptop was on-line.

Complicated? Only a bit. And only because I started with a fresh Pre and a laptop without internet.

Impressive? Most definatley.
Like I just said, I started with a fresh Pre and no home internet.


-----------------
Check out http://precentral.net for Preware and Homebrew



--Sent from my Palm Prē