| March
Meeting ……
Unfortunately the weather
was pretty atrocious last month and many of you were unable to
attend the meeting. Well done to all those of you who managed
to fight through the snow and get to the Bowls Club for Diane’s
excellent presentation. We have two items to consider at this
month’s meeting.
Firstly, it was suggested
that at the AGM, we consider increasing the annual subscription
to £15 for full members and £5 for associate members.
The reasoning behind this is really to ensure we have enough funds
to be able to buy a new projector bulb or any other item that
may require a larger outlay than current funds allow. Our current
subscription level has held steady for a number of years now.
So please give it some thought and let us know your feelings at
the March meeting.
Secondly, as you are probably
aware by now, 2009 is our 25th anniversary and we would like to
celebrate the occasion. Have a think about what you would like
to do and again let us know your feelings. Currently, a meal has
been suggested but all ideas will be considered.
Apple iPhone
We originally wanted a
phone for business use, as we run a small consultancy and Andy
needed to pick emails up while out on site. My colleagues have
Blackberry’s and that looked the way forward, went into
the phone shop and Andy could not use the Blackberry keyboard
very well as the keys are extremely small and nimble. We had a
look at laptops as well, but they seemed a little over the top
for what we wanted. Went into O2 shop, the iPhones were lying
around on a bench and within 5 minutes we had about worked out
every function and were amazed with whole thing.
For the 2G, 8 Gb phone,
the price was reduced to £120 with a £35 per month
contract for 10 hours talk time, unlimited texts and internet
access. They were selling old stock off cheap prior to introduction
of new 3G phone. Although the contract is expensive, we reduced
our costs by looking at how we used our mobile and landline phones.
As we have 10 hours of talk time on iPhone and free BT landline
from 6pm and weekends, we are just more careful with what phone
we use and when and as a result the mobile cost is offset by only
using BT during free talk time.
When you buy the phone
there is next to no service from any of the shops. You have to
take your phone home, download iTunes, plug in your phone and
register on line. You have to provide your bank details and sign
up to an iTunes account. You then have to register with O2 and
set up your monthly direct debit. When you have done all this
you get you can have a new number or transfer the number of your
old mobile phone. Andy chose to keep the number from his now redundant
T-Mobile phone. This was done simply at no extra cost, which meant
we did not have to reprint business cards etc.
At this point we came unstuck,
as we presumed because we already used iTunes on the computer
at home that we would be able to register the phone. It does not
work with anything below Windows XP or Vista and you need iTunes
version 7.3 or later. We ended up upgrading our computer, as it
seemed a sensible time to change everything which added a substantial
amount of money to the original purchase of the iPhone. It did
keep Alan in Ferrero Rocher thought.
The iPhone
The phone is an interconnected
multimedia smartphone. It was introduced in 2007 and has won many
awards including Time magazine “Invention of the Year”.
Development cost in excess of $250 million dollars. Apple has
sold over 13 million iPhones outselling blackberry. Third largest
manufacturer after Nokia and Samsung.
The screen is a liquid
crystal display, specifically designed for bare finger, and will
not work with a glove or stylus. The screen shuts down when it
is near your face, to reduce power and stops your ears putting
the music on when you are talking on the phone. Ambient light
sensors turn brightness down and the 3 axis accelerometer senses
orientation lets you brows and play games more effectively.
It does not have a physical
keyboard, and you use the virtual keyboard when necessary, this
does increase size of screen when you are using other applications.
It has a camera phone,
text messaging, visual voicemail, iPod, internet client to access
email, safari web browsing, Wi-Fi. Mine is quad band GSM with
EDGE, the new 3G is UMTS with HSDPA.
At this point I am going
to cut to the apple iStore to show you the guides, as they are
much simpler to understand rather than me explaining.
Phone calls
The iPhone allows audio
conferencing, call holding, call merging and caller ID. Although
I just like to use it as a phone. Ringtones can be added but that
seems like a minefield and one that I have no inclination to tread
through.
iPod and iTunes shop
The iPhone interfaces with
the iTunes and iPod. You can download iTunes free and use it as
the storing system for your music. You can either download music
via cd’s or from the iStore. When you download cd’s,
there is a function that connect to the internet and the song
titles and artists are retrieved. You also get the album covers
when you buy from the iStore.
I have used the iStore
to download applications predominantly for the children. It is
great if you are sat in the Doctors or in a restaurant trying
to entertain them. A number of applications are free and my son
likes the light sabre and my daughter likes the dog game. You
can buy applications which are more complex, but they are predominantly
for the 3G version and cost up to £5 each. The games have
a Wii feel to them as they use the tilt methods of playing. I
find I have a great deal of street cred with my 9 year olds friends,
which is also a bit of a winner. I am slightly addicted to the
patience card game when I am killing time waiting to pick the
kids up from school.
I have downloaded the free
translator which seems very good indeed.
Multimedia
Internet access is available
when the iPhone is connected to a local area Wi-Fi or a wide area
GSM or EDGE network, both second-generation (2G) wireless data
standards. The iPhone 3G also supports third-generation UMTS and
HSDPA. The iPhone 3G has a maximum download rate of 1.4 Mbp/s.
Users can disable all wireless connections by activating Airplane
Mode.
E-mail
The iPhone also features
an e-mail program that supports HTML e-mail, which enables the
user to embed photos in an e-mail message. PDF, Word, Excel, and
Powerpoint attachments to mail messages can be viewed on the phone.
Apple's MobileMe platform offers push email, which emulates the
functionality of the popular BlackBerry email solution, for an
annual subscription. Yahoo! offers a free push-email service for
the iPhone. IMAP (although not Push-IMAP) and POP3 mail standards
are also supported, including Microsoft Exchange and Kerio MailServer.
Apple has also licensed Microsoft ActiveSync and now supports
the platform (including push email) with the release of iPhone
2.0 firmware. The iPhone will sync e-mail account settings over
from Apple's own Mail application, Microsoft Outlook, and Microsoft
Entourage, or it can be manually configured on the device itself.
With the correct settings, the e-mail program can access almost
any IMAP or POP3 account.
It is incredibly easy and quick to get emails, when I walk through
front door, I push the fetch button and new emails come up within
30 seconds. Andy does the same and we have saved time and money
not booting up the main computer every night. Another benefit
is that you just get your emails, you do not get drawn in to reading
the blurb on the AOL site.
I find the email saving feature very useful. Emails regarding
booking cinemas, etc, I file on my phone. I then don’t need
to print them off as I have immediate access wherever I go (you
do not need to connect to your email account as they are stored
on the phone).
Safari
Safari is the iPhone's
native web browser. The iPhone does not support Flash or Java.
The iPhone supports SVG, CSS, HTML Canvas, and Bonjour.
When you get an email with a hyperlink, it automatically opens
it up in Safari. When I want to look something up I go into Safari
and go to Google and do a search from there. It is limited as
it takes a long time to download information if not Wi-Fi connected.
Extremely useful on holiday when trying to find out local attractions
or opening times. Apparently Google has 50 times more requests
from iPhone than other handsets. You can link up free in McDonalds.
Maps
The maps application can
access Google Maps in map, satellite, or hybrid form. It can also
generate directions between two locations, while providing optional
real-time traffic information. Support for walking directions,
public transit, and street view was added in the version 2.2 software
update. I find the maps useful but again it is not as good as
my SatNav. It does have its place though and finding buildings
and streets in towns is most useful. It is also good because it
goes from Map to satellite quickly; we were able to see just how
near apartment was to beach when choosing a recent holiday.
To be continued
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