Microsoft BOB

Have you guys ever heard of Microsoft BOB? I doubt so as it was not even officially released to the market. Alrite, what's so special about Microsoft BOB? Hmm... a quick read on the article published in Wikipedia, this is what Microsoft BOB:

Microsoft Bob was a Microsoft software product, released in March 1995, which provided a new, nontechnical interface to desktop computing operations. Despite its ambitious nature, Bob failed to penetrate the market and was one of Microsoft’s more visible product failures. Microsoft's Steve Ballmer named Bob as one project "we [had] undertaken ... where we decided that we have not succeeded and let's stop

Alrite, lets put in Layman's term, Microsoft BOB was actually a software that let's you to have a very special user interface on your desktop. Imagine that you have this study/living room picture on your desktop, where you can see there's picture hanging on the wall, address boos on the table, and etc. Each of it are interactable where it launches applications when you clicked on it. You can also customize the items in there, for example hanging a painting of Mona Lisa on the wall can actually brings you the Adobe Photoshop application when the painting was clicked. When you right click on the painting, it actually allows you to resize the painting in order to fits the room's picture. Sounds cool?


This is your MS Bob'ed desktop.


This is one of the application that comes with Microsoft BOB and it can be launched by clicking on the $ folder which placed on table.


Variety of functions that available in the Financial Guide.

Looking at the history of Microsoft BOB, it was actually developed years ago since Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 era. However due to the negative response that they received from various party, Microsoft BOB was terminated even before Windows 98 released. Although it was terminated, it doesn't really dies. Some of it's member managed to survive and sneaked into Windows XP. Who? If you still remember the yellow dog called "Rover" when you launch Windows XP search page, it was one of the member in Microsoft BOB.


Alrite, I know most of you would ask the next question, where to get a copy of Microsoft BOB? Google would be the best answer, as it was illegal to distribute Microsoft BOB openly. Well it's targetted platform was Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. I've tested it on Windows XP, it works fine without any issue, however it refuse to start in Windows Server 2008,(Longhorn server) due to Microsoft BOB dependency on some 16-Bits component. It was reported fail to runs in Vista too, however some of the people managed to get it runs in Windows Vista (Quick search on Youtube video tells that).

More information and detailed review of Microsoft BOB :
http://www.bentuser.com/article.aspx?ID=327&page=1



Enjoy ;)

P1i First Review

After playing this baby for few days, I finally decides to sit down and write a proper review of it. Let's start with outer look of this baby. Well I can say that compared to my previous Nokia N70, P1i design was more classy and it doesn't have the cheap look (or should I say plastic look?). It appears to be more solid than Nokia N70. The only reason that I can find is that you can always change the housing of Nokia N70, but Sony Ericsson P1i, you can't. That's also one of the pain as you have to be very careful on P1i in order not to leave any permanent scars or marks on it. P1i has a fine brushed surface on its front which makes the whole phone appears elegant. The bad thing about this was the brushed surface actually very fragile to scratches. The brushed surface was actually very thin, and once it was scratched, what's left is only the black color which is the original plastic surface under the brushed surface. Besides the brushed surface, another fragile component was the chromed camera shutter button. The chrome will starts to fall off if you use the button too often. This is bad as the camera button of N70 was chromed too, but I had used it for almost 2years, it still in perfect condition.

 

Putting the outer shell aside, in terms of hardware of course P1i is way better than Nokia N70. P1i was not even half year since it was launched compared to N70 which was launched several years ago. It has a pretty decent 3.2 Megapixel camera that comes with auto focus, and the speaker able to produce quite a clear sound. The battery was quite strong compared to Nokia N70, as with my normal usage, 1 or 2 calls, medium amount of texting (around 50), few minutes of WiFi usage, the battery last me for 2days. That was pretty good, as my Nokia N70 average serves me around 1.5days before it gone flat. As for the key layout, I was getting hard time on typing using P1i rockers QWERTY keyboard. I would prefer the traditional keypad layout just like W960i. Till today, I still thought that I can just typing using the numbers key. Eg: 228 for CAT.

 

As for the software and the core Operating System, P1i uses Symbian UIQ3 and comparing to Nokia N70 S60 v2 platform, for me it's quite similar in terms of the way to get application installed. As in UIQ platform, it has the touch screen features, you have to do most of the things on screen instead of hitting the keys in the keypad. I still haven't fully suit myself into that kind of environment yet honestly. One simple example would be in S60 platform, we can do multiselection by holding the pen button down and choose what to select through the d-pad. However in UIQ, there is no pen button nor the D-pad. Furthermore the checkbox of the UIQ was really small so it test your aiming skills as well when you try to do multiselection.

 

One major things that turn off P1i as a great device was the UIQ3 itself. This OS has been put on market more than 1 year ago if I've not mistaken. However application development for this platform seems to be slow and unsuccessful. The best example would be Adobe Flashlite, which it was still not available for UIQ3 up till today. This makes P1i crippled to render flash files which embedded on the webpage even though P1i has the WiFi connection capability. It's quite annoying to see people that using Nokia N80 a 2 years old phone streaming youtube and yet a few months old P1i doesn't capable of doing that. We also know that P1i has an infrared port, where it can be used as universal remote control for house appliances such as aircond or television. However up till today, P1i still can't do that due to inavailability of such application that support UIQ3. There are more examples that you can find where great applications only developed for S60 but not for UIQ3.

 

That's my first review on P1i. I will write into more details on the review when I have more time. J

 

Kopitiam Station @ Berjaya Times Square

I seldom do review for restaurant or coffee shop but this outlet managed to make me sit down and write a real nice review on them. Alrite, this evening Nico and I went to this outlet for a late lunch. Initially we wanted to had our lunch at Wong Kok Tea house, but we decided to try the other outlet. So we end up in Kopitiam Station.

Well, we sat on the table #1, and there is a wireless service call button which you can call for the waiter when you need their service. We are really hungry at that moment, so the moment we sat down, we press the call for service. We waited there patiently for about 1 minute however there is no waiter approching us. We thought that maybe they forgot about the call or too busy at the moment, so we call once again. However it still the same, so we just shout for the waiter to come here. To my surprise the waitress come here empty handed even though the menu was just right beside her. Even a primary school kid knows that we wanted to order for something. Alright, fine.. we calm down and ask for the menu politely. Then it takes her 1 more mintues to get the damn menu which is just few steps away.

After we get the menu, and we settled with the food we want we press the call again in order for us to order the food. As usual, no one was entertaining us. I've seen the waiter and waitress was busy walking here and there and assemble at the counter as if they were very busy. In fact at that time there was only a few table of customers. Is really annoying, and finally another waitress came and took our order.

Again we waited for a long time in order for our food to come. The waiter who serves our drinks accidentally drop the straw on the floor. Then he apologize and never came back, which I thought he would get another straw for us. What the..... Ok.. I asked another waiter for a new straw and the food finally come. Guess what? the waitress put the food and goes away. That's it. We waited for few minutes and no one gives us the fork and spoon. What? They expect me to eat tomyam using my hand? calm down and eat our food. The food was not really nice and for me, I felt that mamak stall at the road side taste even better than that. Maybe it was due to the service they provide, not really the food's fault.

Then we still naively believe that actually the button still serves it purpose, and we press it in order to call for bill. I guess you guys know what happen next right? Ya.. we waited for around 5-10minutes, there is no waiter or waitress walk to our place. Then out of no choice, we have to shout for the waiter to bill. The waiter told us to wait and he walks away. Again never comes back, so we have to shout for waiter again, and another waiter comes. We ask for the bill again, and he says ok then walk away. It takes them more than 5minutes to generate the damn bill and takes another 5minutes to produce the change back to us.

What a great outlet. For me I would never ever go to the outlet again and for you, is up to you to decide whether you still prefer to give them a visit after reading my review.

:)

Sony Ericsson P1i

Now my Nokia N70 was gone, and I am kinda miss it. It serves me real well although it went to hospital twice, and hang up for several occasion. Alrite, I know I've to move on as the fact that N70 was gone. It's hard for me to decide among phone that available in market. I know that the phone that I gonna to get was definately not Nokia anymore. Not because Nokia is bad, is just that none of the Nokia phones has attracted me recently. Though Nokia N95 was pretty cool and pack with real good features, however I still don't like it as it was pretty big in size.

Well for Sony Ericsson, I was actually eyeing for W810i for such a long time already. Hmm.. people asked me why I would prefer W810i instead of some bombastic walkman series phone. Well the answer would be, I like the design of W810i and it actually has the basic features of walkman phone and cybershot phone. Why? Just find me a phone that has walkman and camera with autofocus + marco mode. The answer would be W800i and W810i. Is one of the old model and actually the price was still above RM600 which is higher than the margin that I've set for a W810i.

The second phone would be K810i. Well it has a nice design with the cute circle keypad, a 3.2 Megapixel Cybershot camera with autofocus and marco of course. The music capability was up to the standard and I can say that it's better if not par with W810i. The things that I don't like about this phone is the camera cover was simply as ugly as what in K800i. Well that's the minor thing of course. The main thing that turn me off was the price. It priced at RM850 for a new sets with 64MB M2 bundled. If I want to get an 1GB M2 on top of that, the price would be almost RM1k. For me that's expensive for a phone that priced on that as with the price, I would rather go for Nokia N-Series which at least it was a smartphone.

The last phone which will comes into my consideration was Sony Ericsson P1i. It has all the cool factors that W810i and K810 has, and on top of that it was a smartphone with touchscreen. The reason I place this phone at the bottom of my consideration was this baby is really extremely expensive. The cheapest was RM1.3k for this and it comes with 512MB of M2 memory card.

As I surfing on the lowyat.net forum, I found out that actually somebody wanted to sell off his P1i, and it was the original sets (Thorus warranty). As we know Thorus sets comes with 1GB M2, and priced at RM2k. I was just trying my luck on that and I offerred a really low price for the sets. Well the price was just a little bit more than a new K810i. Upon considerations, well I get a 1GB M2 memory card and Thorus warranty, it is worthwhile compared to K810.

Finally I got a P1i instead of W810i and K810. :) I will make my personal review on this phone after I explore it for few days. So stay tuned.

My N70 was gone

I was planned to use this phone for about 2 years before I decides to change a new one. However that bugger theif, spoilt my plan and I was now headache to think on what phone should I buy.

Alrite this is how it was happened:

Yesterday, Nico and I was out to Sg Wang to buy some clothes for coming Chinese New Year. As we walked out of the mall, the sky already turned dark which I think it was around 7pm so we decided to return back to home. We took a City (Bandar) Rapid KL bus from Bukit Bintang to Pasar Seni, and then walked to Pasaramakota where the Rapid KL bus interchange located. We would need to take U88 in order to back to Pelangi Damansara there, however the bus did not appeared on schedule.

After a long wait, finally U88 appears and the crowds started to squeeze one another in order to get up on the bus. I knew most people get pick pocket'ed during this situations, so I told Nico to be careful with her things. Well at the same time I was taking care of my belongings too and at that moment my phone was still in my pocket. However those people there are pushing one another, and I finally get through of the crowd and went on board of the bus. That is the moment I realized that my phone was gone.

They are really skilled, and I really took my hats off for that damn theif. They managed to sense where my phone located and pick it out without anybody aware of it. I didn't even ever took my phone out since I was at Sg. Wang.

Now my N70 was gone. Is not just a phone. N70 is my
1. Phonebook
2. Organizer for Notes, Task, Calenders
3. Mp3 player
4. Lite Camera
5. Torchlight
6. Alarm Clock
7. Book (I stored some e-books in there and usually read that when I wait for bus)
8. Game device (My favorite game "The Sims" are gone)
9. Dictionary
10. Bible
11. Video player
12. Sound/Video recorder

and of course my Contacts, SMS'es, Photo's, Video's which stored in the memory card, and my SIM cards. It just sux.

So who to blame? My Luck? Forget about it. Even if I lodge a police report, I guess they would just proudly says "Biasa LAH" (Means "it's common" in malay language) and no action taken.