Category Archives: Software reviews

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Rewind: A look back at GEEK! so far

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Well, GEEK! is just over three years old now; and during that time I’ve written over 400 posts. So, while I don’t really want to add anything too new to GEEK! while I get my backup system finalised, I thought now would be a good time to run over some of the posts have brought the most traffic to GEEK!.

By far and away, the most popular post on GEEK! is the “Get the old Windows Live Essentials back“. So many of you were fed up with the poor functionality of Essentials 2011 (including me), so I linked you up with a download and instructions to get the old 2009 version back.

Next up, it’s the tool I found that allowed you to find the biggest files on your hard drive. The tiny tool quickly locates the files that are occupying the most space on your drive, allowing you to delete anything you see as unnecessary.

My review of the Samsung N145P netbook brought the next largest amount of attention to GEEK!. A fully comprehensive review that details everything you needed to know.

Not too far behind, my finding of TVCatchup back in mid 2009 provided Freeview TV access over the internet (in the UK). I still use the site regularly when I’m on the go, as it provides live TV without a bombardment of adverts.

Last in the top five, it’s my iPod touch 4G review. Simple and sweet – it explains all the new features that were (and still are) great additions to the iPod range.

And that’s it – a round-up of the top five biggest posts on GEEK!. Normal service on GEEK! will resume soon, but I’m just optimising the backup process on my new VPS!

HTC Sensation XE full review: inches away from perfection

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Last week I decided it really was time to look into a new phone. I’ve had my trusty Nokia 5230 since April ’10 and, in all honesty, it’s served me very well – but recently it’s started to show it’s signs of old age. The battery isn’t lasting as long as it used to, crashes are becoming more common and it’s started shutting down all by itself. Enough is enough.

But I faced a tough dilemma. Ever since I got my 5230, I’ve been a very loyal member of giffgaff. They’ve been great to me – and their £10 per month goodybag was perfect for my everyday needs. However, I’ve always fancied an Android phone – and they’re expensive – so a contract of some form was inevitable.

Sadly, I am about to close my giffgaff account and transfer my number to my new O2 account – a sad farewell but never mind! Anyway, on to what you want to read about – the phone!

Overall, I’m incredibly impressed by the phone. Compared to the 5230 I had before, this is a gigantic step up with new features left, right and centre. Here’s a quick run-through of the tech specs:

  • 1.5Ghz dual core Snapdragon processor
  • 768MB RAM
  • 8MP dual flash & autofocus camera with 1080p 30fps video recording (plus dual microphones for stereo recording)
  • 4GB internal memory (1GB usable)
  • Up to 32GB microSD expansion (mine came with a 16GB card)
  • Android 2.3.4 (with HTC saying an upgrade to 4.0 coming in early 2012)
  • GPRS/EDGE/3G/HSDPA
  • WiFi b/g/n
  • GPS, bluetooth
  • 4.3″ multitouch display @ 960×540 pixels

That’s the most important stuff covered – and as specs go I’d call that a pretty high end phone. And these specs do play a good part in the phone – with fast boot enabled the phone will boot in around 5 seconds.

Anyway, let’s have a run through most of the key features.

Look and feel of the device

I personally happen to feel that this is one of the best looking HTC devices I’ve seen in a long time. The device is reasonably flat on the front with no hardware buttons at all – just four touch sensitive keys. The screen is very is a beauty to look at – colours are crisp and resolution is excellent. On the side, you get a volume rocker on the left and a sleep button on the top-right of the device. The back of the device has a firm plastic-type feel – it doesn’t look too bad but more importantly it wipes out the potential problem of scratching the body.

Weighing in at around 150g,the device does actually feel quite heavy in the hand – but this is normal for a device of this spec. It’s not uncomfortably heavy to hold, but I think my arm would tire after half an hour or so on the phone.

Camera

The 8MP camera on the phone does a fine job of taking crisp photos. The autofocus works well and also responds to pinpointed focus on screen, whilst the dual flash does a brilliant job of brightening up the darkest of scenes. However, I wasn’t hugely impressed by some low light pictures – and whilst the flash is great it sometimes over-saturates the picture.

The camera is also capable of filming 1080p video at 30fps – and videos recorded look well focused and consistent (little or no dropped frames). The device also packs two microphones for stereo recording – although I found that there was sometimes a worrying amount of background noise picked up by the microphones.

Android and bundled software

I’ve never properly used an Android device before – so this was a great opportunity to start.  The device comes with Android 2.3.4 (and a promised upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich early next year) and it packs a punch. Most of the bundled software works very efficiently and loads up in lightning speed (partly thanks to the dual core 1.5Ghz processor).

There are a couple of pieces of software that do disappoint me, however. For one – the music player; which seems to lack many key features. For example, it fails to remove the word “The” when alphabetising artist names which can be very frustrating. It also fails to group albums in many cases – which is incredibly frustrating at times.

Another piece of software that annoys me a bit is the Mail app. It’s great for receiving emails and will render them very well, but it does a poor job of sending mail out. It doesn’t seem to be capable of inserting line breaks to emails and also doesn’t copy sent mail to an IMAP server. There doesn’t seem to be any option to change these settings – so if anyone can enlighten me here that would be great.

Battery life

If I have one major complaint about the device, it’ll be for battery life. It really is pretty poor (I’m told most Android phones are like this) if you play on your phone a lot. I had the battery from full to flat in 7 hours after quite a lot of app downloads and web browsing. However, if you take it steady and use it normally, it should get you through a day or two without recharge. Still, I’d like to think it’d last a bit longer at this spec of phone.

Bundled “Beats” earphones

I actually really like these – and it was a nice bonus to the phone to have a decent pair of earphones included. With the beats software running on the phone, you’ll get pristine bass and treble from the earphones. However, bear in mind that the “beats” software only really works with the music player – so other apps won’t be able to make use of it.

Overall thoughts

Overall, I’m really happy with the device and glad to have it as my companion for the next 24 months. It’s not perfect – and there are clearly some software issues that could well be solved in Android 4.0 – but overall it does a fantastic job of providing a fine balance of entertainment and practicality. With pricing for the SIM free model around about £430, it makes a great competitor to the iPhone – as it has much better tech specs and a larger screen. However, it’s down to the opinions of the person using the phone – and some would rather use iOS than Android.

If you’re interested to know the contract I got for the phone – it was the o2 200 DATA Bonus contract purchased from Dialaphone. Coming in at £536 for the entire 2 year contract, it makes great value. The plan comes with 200 minutes, unlimited (3000) texts and 500MB data every month. If you’re a data junkie, you can get the plan extended to 1GB data for an extra £4 per month (change it after you’ve started your contract and received the phone).

Is the new “Find My Friends” app by Apple a handy tool or a stalker’s paradise?

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To coincide with the release of iOS5 on October 12th, Apple released several new optional apps for iPod touch, iPhone and iPad. One of these apps is Find My Friends, which claims to be a handy tool for locating friends and family by making use of their GPS and A-GPS functionality.

The new app has been met with mixed reviews – with many claiming the app could simply be used as a stalker’s tool in the wrong hands.

However, I happen to think that the app is a very clever idea – with many not-seen-before features that make the app a safe, unobtrusive yet helpful way of keeping track of friends and family.

First of all, the app is completely opt-in only. This means that people can only track you with full permission granted by you – meaning nobody can publicly see where you are.

You can either invite people to permanent access to your location, or temporary “event” access which gives people access to your location for a set date and time. This means, for example, that if you’re meeting somebody at a festival, you can give them temporary access which terminates when the festival is over.

Also, you can quite easily turn off the app’s location tracking if you’re going somewhere you’d rather other people didn’t know about – simply by switching on ‘Hide from Followers” in the Me tab – making it easy to hide personal places. Whilst I’d quite like it to have a function where you could tell it not to report specific places, I’m sure this could eventually be possible.

Overall, I think this is an improvement on many previous tracking apps that have been released – and could seen as very useful to many.

Prey–incredible free computer tracking software

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For many months now I’ve been looking for some good value tracking software to install on my netbook and (potentially) my portable devices. As much as I hope my netbook never gets stolen – you can never be sure what might happen and it’s better to be prepared.

It was only today that I’ve finally found the answer. It’s called Prey. It’s an open-source piece of kit that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Once you’ve downloaded and installed it, that’s the last you’ll see of it. Make sure when you install it to select the option not to install start menu shorcuts as it will make the software harder to find by an thief.

From here onwards, all of your settings for the program will be managed online. Log onto your account at the program’s website, and you’ll be presented with a handful of useful properties.

For example, you can get the program to take logs of any wi-fi networks it’s connected to, together with pictures from any connected webcam and screenshots of your display. These are then summarised in reports that are emailed direct to your inbox for your viewing pleasure. Believe me – you’ll be astonished at what it’ll pick up.

I happen to think this is an essential for anybody with a laptop that they care about – the software is totally FREE and could help you (and the police) in what would otherwise be a relatively hopeless situation. The program won’t hamper your computer’s performance at all (using just 5MB of RAM in Windows) and you’ll forget you’ve even installed it.

Encrypt Your Hard Drive for Free with Truecrypt

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Article first published as Encrypt Your Hard Drive for Free with Truecrypt on Technorati.

It’s worrying to think that the computer you’re using right now could be holding all of your personal documents, photos and videos. If your computer was stolen tomorrow, would any of the data on your hard drive be safe?

Backing up all of your data is one thing – and thankfully more and more of us are getting into the habit of doing so. However, have you ever thought about the personal data on your machine that someone else might find?

This is where Truecrypt comes in. It’s a free, open source utility designed to help protect you and your data in the event of someone getting hold of your hard drive. It works by encrypting your entire hard drive and then requiring a password (or encryption key) on boot up to access the data. As soon as the correct password is entered, your machine is fully functional. Without the correct password, the data is meaningless to anyone – even the most intelligent of hackers.

Getting hold of Truecrypt is very easy. Simply head to the download page on their website (here) and grab your copy.

Once you’ve got it up and running, simply follow the clear on screen instructions for getting your drive encrypted. The program will need about 20 minutes of your time to configure all of the relevant options, and then it will do the rest in 1-10 hours (depending on the hard disk size and computer speed).

There are many other paid solutions available, but if you’d rather not spend money this should be more than sufficient. Whilst expensive versions of Windows do include encryption as standard, you do have have a hard drive that supports it. If you don’t have a supported drive, you have to use a memory stick to boot your computer – which certainly isn’t ideal.

However, if you’re using a low powered machine such as a netbook,you might want to think twice before encrypting your drive. Bear in mind that your computer will have to decrypt your data constantly when it is in use – and this may have adverse effects on your computer’s performance and battery life. If you still want to encrypt data with a low powered machine, you might want to consider placing it on a memory stick and encrypting that instead (Truecrypt can encrypt portable storage too).

On the other hand, if you store vast amounts of data on your machine and need to keep it safe from unauthorized access – this is the ideal solution.