14 July 2008

What iPhone doesn't have

iPhone sequel is red hot. Even as it rolls out across the world in phases, the demand seems to be increasing with each passing day.

And as every buyer would proudly wink and declare his iPhonic status, the have nots will recoil and steel their resolve to acquire one.

By now you would surely remember by heart what the iPhone has. But wait, do you also know what it does not have?

We bring you a list of features that tells you what even the iconic iPhone doesn’t have...

Miss 1: Little on the looks front

Apple products are known for their design and looks. So, expectations about a new look were high. In fact, rumour mills worked over time on the looks of iPhone 2, it was speculated that the new back of the phone will no be longer metal -- but the whole thing will be glossy black, from top to bottom.

However, the new iPhone offers nothing new in terms of looks. The 3G iPhone looks pretty much like its predecessors.

The new iPhone is only about 0.1 ounce lighter than the previous model. The 3G iPhone shows a few cosmetic changes from the front, with similar display size and resolution, and the single Home button placed below the screen.

The phone's black plastic skin back has been replaced by silver-aluminum back. While the 8GB model comes in black only, the 16GB version is available in both black and white.

Miss 2: Video camera

There were speculations for a higher-resolution camera and a possible support for digital video recording. However, 3G iPhone disappoints with the same 2 megapixel camera and no video recording option and flash and optical zoom too missing.

This is specially a dampener since video recording feature is today found in most cell phones, even those at the lower end. Also, most of Apple’s rivals in the cell phone space like Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung are offering higher version cameras.

Sony Ericsson recently introduced an 8 megapixel camera. Samsung already has one in the range. Others Nokia and Motorola too offer 5 megapixel camera phones.

Miss 3: Multimedia deficit

Another sorely missed out features are multimedia messaging and voice dialing. Users can send text messages or snapshots via email, but there's still no MMS (multimedia messaging) feature on the iPhone!

Also, the phone disappoints fans who were hoping for a bundle of new multimedia features in 3G iPhone

Miss 4: User replaceable battery

User replaceable battery and tactile feedback for the touchscreen, both have been given a miss in the new iPhone. User-replaceable battery is a serious drawback.

Though Apple reportedly claims that it left out the user-replaceable battery because it adds bulk and weight, users can’t help comparing it with other smartphones.

Miss 5: Incompatible Bluetooth

Users were expecting a landscape keyboard, capability to cut and paste, expanded memory and additional Bluetooth profiles - which all too is missing.

For example, while iPhone supports Bluetooth headsets, the lack of keyboard or headphone would be a hindrance for those who want to optimise their experience with wireless peripherals.

Also, 3G iPhone does not have A2DP Bluetooth. Users may also sorely miss the support for Bluetooth stereo or in-car Bluetooth handsfree.

Miss 6: No support for Adobe Flash

Adobe says it is working on iPhone Flash, but sadly for now there is no support for Adobe Flash in 3G iPhone.

Presently, when users will browse through Web pages with Adobe Flash it will display empty spaces with missing icons. Apple claims Flash would run too slowly on the iPhone.

Thus, the lack of Flash support for the Safari Web browser limits the access of several websites on the iPhone.

Miss 7: No cut-and-paste

This may be hard to digest. BlackBerry has it, Nokia has it, however, 3G iPhone lacks it.

Most of the smartphones available in the market support the cut and paste feature, but somehow Apple has preferred to stay away from it.

* Indiatimes News Network dt 14 7 2008

The speed spur

Here are some freeware add-ons that speed up application loading and improve system performance.

Adobe Reader Speed-up: (Size 245 KB) This software disables the majority of plug-ins that are completely useless for most users. Adobe Reader Speed-up supports any version of the Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader software, both Normal and Full/ Professional, from version 3.0 to 8.0 and upwards.

To configure this, just double-click the Reader Speedup.exe and select speed up radio button and click Start button. On the next screen, Select Speed-up Mode as "SpeedUp - Fast (recommended)" and click Start button and Click Finish. It also supports advanced tweaks such as disable automatic updates, splash screen on Reader's startup, browser integration, etc. To access Advanced tweaks screen, just click the link "Tweaks" on the main screen. It has the option on main screen to restore to original settings at any time. For more information, please refer the readme.txt file. You can download this from http:// www.download.com/Adobe-Reader- SpeedUp/3000-2378_4-10720728.html

FireTune for Firefox (Size 621 KB)

This is aimed at bettering your browsing experience with Firefox. According to your specific computer speed and Internet connection speed, FireTune will optimise several internal settings of Firefox for better performance.

To configure this, just double-click FireTune.exe. It is advisable to take a back-up of original configuration before making any changes. To do this, please click "Create backup of configuration" button on the main screen. Just click "Tune it" button to optimise your settings. It supports other useful settings such as "Turn on autocomplete for URLs, Optimize Firefox memory usage, etc. It has, on the main screen, the "Restore original configuration" option to restore to original settings at any time. It can be downloaded from http://www.totalidea.com/content/ downloads.php

Photoshop SpeedUp (Size 311 KB)

As its name suggests, this software significantly decreases the time it takes to load Adobe Photoshop by disabling the plugins that you may not need. There are several options such as whether to load the Adobe fonts, load the presets, and set the memory usage. You can restore the original settings at any time. Adobe Photoshop SpeedUp is freeware, works with Adobe Photoshop versions 3 through 8. Restore to original settings with a click of the Restore button at any time. You can download this from http:// www.acropdf.com/products.html

Tunexp 1.5 (Size 1 MB)

Tunexp maximises the performance of Windows XP. The tweaks are presented in five categories such as Memory and file system, Hardware, Internet, Services and Miscellaneous. The documentation is neatly presented. Please read the documentation for "Recommended action" for each setting before making any changes.

During the first run, you will initially have to choose your Windows location (for instance, drive C).

It supports the following tweaks: Disable Paging Executive, Faster Shutdown, File Allocation Size Tweak, Optimise Prefetch, Increase NTFS Performance, IO Page Lock Limit, Clear Prefetch Folder, Defrag Boot Files, Ultra-Fast Booting, Enable UDMA-66, Speed-up Windows IRQ Handling, Increase DNS Cache, Messenger Etc. This software is useful for advanced users and can be downloaded from http:// www.download.com/TuneXP/3000- 2086_4-10290929.html

M. SAMPATH

The Businessline dt. 14 7 2008

The ugly race for numbers

Notwithstanding the Left leaders’ shrill statements denying any kind of a floor co-ordination with the BJP while voting against the confidence motion in the House, it remains that the nuke deal will manage to achieve what no recent election has. There will be a distinct division of all kinds of political groups with diverse and dramatically opposite ideologies, for and against the nuke deal, says RASHEEDA BHAGAT.


Short of fist-fights, a lot of action is happening on the national political theatre. And the frenzy with which our neta log have started hitting out at each other, the days in the run-up to the trust vote in the Lok Sabha, are bound to turn murkier.

The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) on its part has pulled out all the plugs and unleashed an army of spokespersons to “inform” the people of this country that the Indo-US civil nuclear deal is going to be really good for them. Never mind the price of onions or tomatoes; they need nuclear power and badly too!

The Left, on the other hand, particularly the CPI (M) General Secretary and the conductor of the entire anti-nuke deal orchestra, Mr Prakash Karat, has further hardened its resolve to ensure the defeat of the UPA Government in the trust vote scheduled for July 22. And so we had Mr Karat driving down to the BSP chief, Ms Mayawati’s house in Delhi on Sunday for a tete-a-tete on the crucial need for her to manage floor co-ordination with the Left parties to ensure the defeat of the UPA Government.

Ms Mayawati, on her part, was most cordial to her visitor and promised all support. She is, of course, livid at the CBI raking up once again the issue of her disproportionate assets. Clearly, it has been done at the behest of the Samajwadi Party duo, Mr Mulayam Singh, and Mr Amar Singh, and the timing leaves much to be desired. But even though it is clearly a case of vendetta, what would get the goat of ordinary Indians struggling hard to make the two ends meet during these very tough times is the mind-boggling number of properties — land, houses, villas, etc, that Ms Mayawati and her relatives own, not to mention the various bank accounts, fixed deposits and other investments.

Big business and politics

Anyway, returning to the political climax towards which the country is headed in a week’s time, and the manner in which the CBI suddenly woke up to the fact that Ms Mayawati’s assets are disproportionate to her known sources of income, tells us once again that in the murky world of politics, nothing really changes when it comes to arm-twisting tactics, even though the principal players keep changing.

The only difference is that our politicians seem to get more and more brazen; and, of course, this time around, the people at the helm have had to deal with astute politicians such as Mr Mulayam Singh who can drive a really hard bargain. He and Mr Amar Singh would have certainly bargained very hard, and put in the caveat that unless they see results before the trust vote day of July 22, their votes could not be taken for granted.

Along with targeting Ms Mayawati, Mr Amar Singh has openly stated that the SP has asked the UPA Government to levy windfall profit tax on private oil refining companies; the target is obviously Reliance Industries headed by Mr Mukesh Ambani, the elder brother of Mr Anil Ambani who is extremely close to Mr Amar Singh. There have also been reports that the SP leader has asked the Prime Minister to bring about rapprochement between the two estranged brothers.

All this only goes to reiterate the thin dividing line between big business and politics.

Returning to the trust vote of July 22, while all the principal protagonists — the Congress(I), the BJP and the Left — are presenting a confident picture of how the vote will go their way, with each passing day, the smaller parties are changing their stance with a new statement. The Telengana Rashtra Samithi, for instance, has obviously taken a cue from the SP leaders’ book and announced a series of bandhs and protests in the coming week to force the UPA Government’s hand in coming out with a clear commitment on the party’s one-point agenda — a separate Telengana state.

The TRS President, Mr K. Chandrasekhar Rao, has unequivocally said that the UPA could get his party’s three votes only if the Union Cabinet came out with a resolution announcing the formation of a separate Telengana. And, this should be before July 22. When the stakes are so high, as they obviously are for the UPA Government to survive and not be forced to seek a fresh mandate from the people in tough times such as these, the voices making demands are strident too. The clear message from Mr Rao is: My need is today!

But the one politician who might be even more difficult to get on the UPA’s side is former Prime Minister and Chief of the Janata Dal (S), Mr Deve Gowda. The Congress leadership knows only too well that he can effortlessly run circles around anybody and, hence, while bringing him on board would increase the comfort level of the Congress-led UPA, the strategy to win the vote of confidence does not really bank on Mr Gowda’s support. If it comes — in the form of three valuable votes — it will be a bonus, seems to be the thinking.

The Shiromani Akali Dal has finally ended speculation that it will vote in favour of the UPA Government just because the Prime Minsiter, Mr Manmohan Singh, is a Sikh. “Don’t drag me into non-issues like the prime minister being a Sikh,” the Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal chided reporters in Jalandhar and said that since SAD is a constituent of the NDA, it will go along with it on the trust vote.

Both Mr Pranab Mukherjee and Mr Karat have met the National Conference chief, Mr Omar Abdullah, to seek his party’s two votes on the deal. But the NC is yet to disclose its stand on the issue, though there are indications that it might go along with the UPA. Allying with the BJP in the past cost the party its government in Jammu and Kashmir and with the PDP and Congress parting ways in the State, who knows if a different political alignment might crop up there. Anyway, the NC had emerged the single-largest party in the last assembly election and had opted to sit in the Opposition then. With the State already in election mode, a deal with the NC might cost the Congress dear in J&K politics, just as it threatens to do in Uttar Pradesh. Well, the Congress leadership will have to weigh the pros and cons of saving the UPA Government of today by sacrificing the party’s prospects in the future in important states such as UP and J&K.

Interesting polarisation

On the other side of the divide, Mr Karat is busy getting as many allies in his stable as he possibly can to ensure that the UPA Government loses the trust vote — after all he has said from various platforms that he will not allow the nuclear deal to go through. And he is not to be taken lightly. Mr Pranab Mukherjee who met the veteran Marxist leader, Mr Jyoti Basu, on Sunday to brief him about the parting of ways between the UPA Government and the Left, made no bones about proclaiming: “We consider Jyoti Basu, along with Harkishen Singh Surjeet, the architects of the Left’s coalition with the UPA.” This was an obvious effort to snub Mr Karat, who appears even more determined to defeat the UPA on the floor of the Lok Sabha than the BJP!

Unwittingly, and notwithstanding the Left leaders’ shrill statements, denying that they will have any kind of a floor co-ordination with the BJP while voting against the confidence motion in the House, the fact remains that the nuke deal will manage to achieve what no recent Indian election has. There will be a distinct division of all kinds of political groups with diverse and dramatically opposite ideologies, for and against the nuke deal. So essentially we will see two big blocks in Parliament on July 22 on the nuke issue.

If our politicians can manage to pull off such an impossible coup in the next election — immediately, in November or next year — we can be spared the painful prospect of seeing fractured verdicts and the hectic horse-trading that has followed in the last few elections.

But for the time being, horse-trading is very much the favourite sport. The figure, did you ask? Just choose any digit, put any number of zeroes that your imagination can muster, and seek the price. Provided you (or your friend, relative or whoever) have a vote that counts!

Response may be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in

The Businessline dt. 15 7 2008