2008.9 Basic questions

[Iain B. Findleton]

Well, the box certainly is in a fairly raw state, and most of the apps
there are pretty basic in terms of polish and performance, surprisingly
so to me, as it is a machine that is roughly the equivalent of a desktop
that one might have used in the late '90s. However, I make use of it
instead of carting around a laptop. You can run a lot of stuff on the
machine from the Linux community if you just use the usb network
connection to another PC. With 8 GB of storage on it, you probably don't
need more for usual daily business apps, and while the bloatware out
there is a possible problem, there is a huge amount of stuff that runs
very nicely, thankyou, right on the phone.

It also works fairly well as a basic phone/text gaget for me if the
network signal is good. The only real irritations that I have found are:

1) GSM reception is poor compared to most standard phones, and
positively crappy compared to an ancient Nokia I use.
2) GPS reception is flakey when not actually under clear sky.
3) Battery life is lousy.

And of course, the buggy software can hurt. Surprisingly, I activated
swap on my FR and stability and periodic slowing have improved. Don't
know why that should be, but there you are.

Generally, the performance of all the parts of this box is far better
than the 33 Mhz i486 I ran Slackware 96 on back in the previous century,
so, there is a solution out there. Whether the OM people are able to put
it together is an open question. I suggest they hire some old people if
they have not gotten some there already.
If a programmer is old enough, he/she will know how to make everything
run well in 16KB of memory and 128KB of 230ms disk access.....

rakshat hooja wrote:
>
>
>
>     Sorry for the chain of posts, but when I bought the phone, IDA
>     Systems claimed it had a 500 MHz processor.  Now they have
>     corrected their website to say it is 400 MHz.
>
>     Are we trying to promote openness here, or damage it?
>
>
> Dear Nishit,
>
> The 500MHz was based on early confusion based on the fact that the
> Samsung processor is capable of 500 Mhz but is clocked at 400 Mhz.
>
> The early buyers were offered 30 days return policy (we only get 28
> days dead on arrival from Openmoko) for the very reason that some
> buyers may not like what the Freerunner offers. 30 days are over but
> in your case, as a special consideration, if you are not satisfied
> with the Freerunner please post it back to us and we will give you a
> full refund. We have limited supply of the Freerunner and need devices
> to send as review samples.
>
> Hope this will take you out of your misery a little.
>
> Regards,
>
> Rakshat
>
>
>
>  
>
>
>
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>
>
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-- 
Iain B. Findleton
Tel: 514-457-0744