BandWidth; The Speed Test App For Windows Phone

For some reason a Speedtest.net app for Windows Phone has not yet been published, but there is an alternative available. The application is called BandWidth, and is a fairly basic speed test app. There is a very large amount of servers to test your speed to, and you are able to select from a list of all of the servers within up to a 1000 mile radius of you. The actual speed test will give you information about the latency of your connection, the download speed, and the upload speed.

BandWidth for Windows Phone also allows you to change to size of the file used for the test, and the file sizes range from 2 MB to 17 MB. Additionally, the Windows Phone speed test app records all of the speed tests that you have done and allows you to brag about them to your favorite social networks. You can also see all of your results on a map, showing what speeds you got to which server.

In my opinion, the BandWidth app for Windows Phone is pretty good, but could be better. It works for testing your speed, but it also lags a lot at times. It is also difficult to see your speed at real time as it is only shown on a tiny bar which sometimes freezes. For now, this app will work fine for testing your speed, but lets hope that a Speedtest.net app comes out for Windows Phone soon as they seem to be some of the best speed test apps.

ORB For Windows Phone; An Incredibly Addicting Game

There are many games available for Windows Phone, ORB being one of them. ORB is a game where you control a ball through a field of tiles, some of which are missing. Your goal is to navigate the ball through the tiles and away from the missing ones for as long as you can. If you fall into one of the spots where there is no tile, you lose. Also, as you roll over the tiles, they disappear, and the tiles at the bottom of the screen also disappear as your ball moves, making it necessary for you to go at a fairly rapid pace. There are also various special tiles that will either make you go left or right, make you go faster, make you fly for a short period of time, and more.

The Windows Phone game is very addicting and very fun. It is available in both a free and a paid version ($1.29), the only difference being that the free version is add supported. I would definitely encourage you to get this game, so everyone head on over to the Windows Phone Marketplace and get ORB or ORB Free.

Internet Sharing on Windows Phone

Microsoft has also introduced internet sharing in Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango). Of course, this feature is carrier dependent and most carriers will choose to block it, but it is still a very nice feature to have. Most Windows Phone have either already gotten the update that enables this feature or will be getting it sometime in the near future, but let me explain to you how it works. Also, keep in mind that your carrier may have disabled this feature on your device.

The only method of internet sharing on Windows Phone is by creating a mobile hotspot with your Windows Phone device. This is a fairly easy process; all you have to do is go into settings; internet sharing, and then set up your hostpot. Your hostpot can either have WPA2 encryption, or can be open. Up to five devices can connect to the hotspot at a time, and all of the data will simply go over your cellular connection. For now there is no way to tether via Bluetooth or USB.

Now, let's talk a little bit about internet sharing on T-Mobile. T-Mobile is a really nice carrier because they tend to disable as little features on their devices as possible. Luckily for me, internet sharing was one of the features that they decided not to disable on the HTC HD7. Though T-Mobile offers an internet sharing add-on for your rate plan, they also allow you to use internet sharing without having this add on. I do not believe that there is a charge for this if you already have a data plan, but I cannot say anything for sure. For now it seems like T-Mobile has simply been really nice in enabling internet sharing for free. Let's hope that it lasts.

Multitasking on Windows Phone

Multitasking on Windows Phone is confusing. When you are in an app, you can hold down the back button on the phone and you will be presented with an array of several cards. For some of you have have used WebOS, this may look a little familiar. The cards that are presented to you at this screen are all of the apps that you previously had open. It doesn't matter how you exited out of them; whether you simply clicked the home button, locked your device, or whatever. These apps are in a 'frozen' state. They aren't actually running, but they are saved in the memory and will usually resume quite quickly if you click on them.

Most apps that are running in the background on Windows Phone aren't actually running, except for a few exceptions that Microsoft has made. Music apps such as Pandora, Slacker Radio, Spotify, and more will actually play your music in the background, as opposed to how other apps will behave in the background. Let's say you have a game, but then you exit out of it and go to the home screen. If you hold the back button and go back to the game, it will resume right where you left off, as if it were paused. This means that the application wasn't actually running in the background, it was just 'sleeping'.

Another confusing thing about multitasking with Windows Phone is that you can't actually control which apps you want to keep running; it will always be the most recent ones. If you want to keep a game open but you go to ten other apps, your game will most likely no longer be running. This makes it very difficult to control which apps you actually run in the background.

Windows Phone gives you the appearance of multitasking without actually giving you multitasking, which may be a good or a bad thing. One one side of the issue, this method of multitasking is the thing that makes Windows Phone so smooth. My HTC HD7 never freezes up or lags, and this may be the reason why. On the other hand, not having true multitasking can be a downer in some situations.

To understand multitasking on Windows Phone, you really have to experience it for yourself. It works, but it isn't what you would expect. Also, multitasking is only available on Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) and above.

Tiles; What Are They?

If you've ever used Android you are probably used to having widgets and icons on your home screen, and if you have an iPhone you just have icons. Well, Windows Phone is entirely different. The Windows Phone home screen is made up of an array of 'live tiles'. These tiles are in between widgets and icons. They can take you to applications, but they can also show you information at a glance like widgets can on Android. Some cases in which this is seen and can be useful is with weather apps, which will show you the current temperature, and also with social networking apps, which will show you any notifications that you may have. Of course, not all apps have live tiles, so you should read the description of the application if you are really interested. Live tiles update in the background, but if you have too many updating, they will drain your battery fairly quickly.

Personally, I love the live tiles. If I just need to check how many Facebook notifications, messages, or missed calls I have, I can simply look at the home screen without having to open any apps. It is also really easy for me to get to any apps, as the home screen is very responsive, smooth, and fast. In fact, you will almost never see any lag in Windows Phone. Although most of the devices only have 512 MB of RAM, they never lag the way that Windows Phone handles the applications, or at least this is the case with my HTC HD7.

I believe that this new style of home screen is very revolutionary, modern, and usable. It is really easy to navigate and makes the entire experience of using the phone much better. It takes some getting used to, especially if you have never used a Windows Phone device before, but once you get used to the tiles you will never go back.

Just Got My Windows Phone

I just got my Windows Phone, and it is pretty amazing. First, let's start with a little bit of my background. My first smartphone operating system was Symbian, and let's admit it; Symbian is pretty bad. After that I used several BlackBerry devices for awhile, after which I was on Android for a very short amount of time. Then we arrive at the present.

Why did I choose Windows Phone? Well, for one, it looks really cool. I like trying new things, and I felt like taking a chance and going for a Windows Phone. Since I am on T-Mobile, I didn't really have that many options for Windows Phone. I chose the HTC HD7 over the HTC Radar 4G mainly because of the larger screen. The specifications of the two devices aren't that different, so I went with my gut instinct and went with the HTC HD7.

My first impression; Windows Phone is an entirely new experience. You can't compare Windows Phone to any other smartphone experience because it was built from the ground up as an entirely new platform. If you have ever used an iPhone or an Android device, or any other smartphone for that matter, Windows Phone will be a completely new experience for you. For now, I love Windows Phone, but we'll just have to wait and see what happens next.

PNY Customer Service Experience; Horrible!

I purchased an 8 GB PNY SDHC card a couple of years ago, and I was pretty happy with it. It was a class 4, and I had tested it with some flash memory benchmarking software, and it didn’t live up to its name, as you can see in the benchmark below. It should be at least 4 MB/s for each test below in both read and write speed. That was my first disappointment, but I was still fine with the card. My real problems came when the plastic on the connector pins started to chip off. At first I thought that it would not be a problem, but it turns out that plastic is sensed by most SD card readers, which use it to determine whether or not there is an SD card inserted. This meant that my SD card was practically useless. Luckily, the card had a lifetime warranty, so I decided to call PNY and ask for a replacement. I called at about noon on a Tuesday, at which time most companies are usually working. I was talking to a machine for about ten minutes, and was then told that I would be called back. I waited a couple of days, and then I was, and was told that I was not eligible for a replacement if there was physical damage. This was completely unacceptable for me. I mean, it was their fault that they built a card which breaks after less than two years. I have had many other SD cards, and they have survived for much longer than this one. I was on the phone for about fifteen minutes, with no progress. I decided that I would just give up on it and buy another card, on that was not PNY. My experience with PNY was completely unacceptable. First I had to wait two days to actually talk to someone, and then they didn’t honor their lifetime warranty.

Anyway, I ended up buying another card, the Transcend TS16GSDHC10E 16 GB class 10 card. Benchmarks are below, and I am very happy with the card. It also has a lifetime warranty, and I am hoping that I will not have to use it. If I do, I hope that it is actually honored. Overall, I am very disappointed with PNY and will never buy one of their products again, and I am very happy with the benchmarks, performance, reliability, and more of my new Transcend card. 

PNY Benchmark

Transcend Benchmark

Kodak Easyshare Max Z990 Review; Well Featured, But Falls Behind on Performance

So, as you may already know, I recently purchased a Kodak EasyShare Max Z990 camera. It had pretty great features including a 12 megapixel BSI-CMOS sensor, 30x optical zoom, 1080p video recording, full manual settings, and a variety of other features. I really liked the camera on paper; I mean, it has better features than any other camera in the same price range. I received the camera, and it worked great upon light inspection. Picture quality was amazing and I really liked the features. The only problem was that the camera was slow. It would randomly freeze and become unresponsive, and I had absolutely no idea why. I tried replacing my SD card with a class 10 card, but that did not help. I even got a replacement hoping that it was just my unit having issues, but that still did not fix it, so I decided to return the camera. It took great low-light photos, amazing video with stereo audio, and had pretty much anything that you could ask for in this class of camera. The only problem was that it was slow, which caused me to miss a lot of shots while I was waiting for it to become responsive again. Since I returned the camera, I didn’t even have time to do a full review. All I can tell you is that the camera takes great pictures and videos, has great features, and sells for a pretty good price, but it’s *really* slow, and causes you to miss a lot of good shots. I don’t think that the features make up for that, and I think that I will be purchasing another camera, so expect that review soon. P.S. It won’t be a Kodak, because when a brand fails on me once, I don’t consider that brand again.

I Returned It; My Kodak EasyShare Max Z990

You may have read the blog post that I transferred from Tumbr, talking about my new camera, the Kodak Z990. Well, if you haven’t, let me just tell you that I was having a lot of issues with it being slow and unresponsive, and this was unacceptable for me. I decided to return it, and now I am looking for a better camera. If you have any suggestions, please let me know in the comments below. 

My Less Than Perfect HP Customer Service Experience

So, let me first of all explain what has happened. I purchased an HP G42-415DX a while back as one of my main computers (I will post a review of it on the blog shortly). It worked great, except for a couple of flaws that I will mention in the review. About a week ago, which is about three months since I purchased the computer, it started to freeze. I thought that maybe it was just a glitch or something and that restarting the computer would fix it, but that was not the case. It turns out that the hard drive had failed, and I needed to get it replaced. I decided to run some diagnostics tests before contacting HP and I ran a hard drive test which failed. Then I decided to contact HP and see what they could do for me, as the laptop was still in warranty.

I contacted them via chat for the first time, and they told me that I should run the hard drive test again. I ran it and got a failure ID, but then they told me that I had to run the test via the BIOS. Until now I had been running the tests via the HP diagnostics software. I was fine with running the test via the BIOS, so I did. It turned out that the BIOS tests would take about an hour and a half, so the HP agent told me that I should contact HP once it was finished. I waited for the test to finish, but I did not get an error code. I thought that this was strange, but I decided to contact HP again and ask them what was going on. They told me to run the test again, but this was really unacceptable for me, so I told them that the test was not resulting in an error code. They put me on hold and told me that I would need to replace the hard drive. I was fine with this, and asked them what my options were. They told me that they could ship me a new hard drive and that I could replace it, and I didn’t think that this was a very good option for me because I didn’t want to be liable if anything ended up happening.

Now, I am pretty much a nerd and know my way around computers, so changing a hard drive isn’t really a very big deal for me. I guess that I just couldn’t believe that HP was making other customers change their own hard drives. I don’t know what I had against it that much, I guess I didn’t really like the idea. I asked them if there were any other options, and they said that I could send in my computer for repair, but that it would take about a month to get it back to me. This was unacceptable, as I use this computer every day and I don’t really think that I could go without a computer for a month. I asked them if it would be possible to just get a replacement computer, but they said that they don’t offer that. Then, somehow, someone from HP told me that it would be necessary to replace the motherboard, and I have no idea why they said that. I didn’t know what was going on, and then they told me that they would transfer me. Then they transferred me and the agent told me that I did not need to replace the motherboard, just the hard drive, and that the agent whom I had talked to was wrong. I was getting really confused and decided to agree on replacing the hard drive myself.

Anyway, I was on the phone with them for about four hours, which is completely unacceptable. Also, the line quality was terrible with all of the representatives except for one, which led me to believe that it was on their end. I was transferred numerous times and I don’t really think that any of the agents knew what to do.

Once I received the hard drive I replaced it. It turned about being surprisingly easy to replace it. They even sent me a 7200 RPM hard drive to replace the 5400 RPM one. That was good, even though it was refurbished. The hard drive worked fine and I was able to recover my files, although it was extremely difficult.  My computer would freeze after a couple of minutes of use, so I had to recover my files in parts. I ended up getting everything back to normal, but the reason why I am writing this article is because of my horrible experience with HP customer service. I mean, it should not take four hours to get a new hard drive for a computer, and they should really get some better repair options than having the customer repair their own hard drive.