Software architect working in Symbian/S60 area since 2000 and still being enthusiastic about mobility. Please visit my introduction page on Forum Nokia Champions web page.
Carbide.C++ - How to purchase it?
tote_b5 | 22 November, 2006 12:20
We had to purchase a few Carbide.C++ licenses for our company - the first ones, actually. Therefore, I visited Forum
Nokia/Tools/SDK section in order to find the right link that I can click on to purchase the licenses. The problem that there wasn't
any such link. :( I could have downloaded the IDE, but I had already done it by then. I've also opened up the IDE (with a temporary
license) to see if it contains any menu items that reveal anything with regards to ordering licenses. Even though there is a
submenu under Help/Carbide licenses, which contains some menu items for installing, viewing and even borrowing licenses, but
nothing mentioned about buying them. So, after failing to find out how to buy this software, I decided to search for it on the Web!
First, I searched for "order buy Carbide.C++", again, on Forum Nokia - without any success. Okay, there was a bunch of links that I
could have chosen from, but it was not intuitive to pick up the right one.
Then I decided to use the ultimate tool with the same seach query: Google. It was the second link that worked (the first was NewLC - Hi, Eric, how are you doing?:). Surprise, what kind of link was it? A link to a FN Discussion Board topic! Hey, isn't it in the
interest of Nokia to sell their product?! Then, imho, it shouldn't be a *discussion board topic* that advertises it the best (i.e.
being the most popular link) the way of purchasing Carbide.C++, no? Reaching the end of the discussion it finally turned out that
there was a link that anybody can use. Btw, the links mentioned above are as follows:
- Buying Carbide Dev
- Forum Nokia PRO - Company Registration
Another interesting thing is that you have to be a Forum Nokia PRO member for buying the product. That's good, but I was afraid of
the same thing than a few poster were, too: FN PRO registration costs thousands of euros. Per year. Well, I haven't yet completed
the process of purchasing our licenses, however, I'm just hoping that Mike Trujillo (from Forum Nokia) is right: "There is no charge for setting up the account".
Any comments?
Tote
Nokia/Tools/SDK section in order to find the right link that I can click on to purchase the licenses. The problem that there wasn't
any such link. :( I could have downloaded the IDE, but I had already done it by then. I've also opened up the IDE (with a temporary
license) to see if it contains any menu items that reveal anything with regards to ordering licenses. Even though there is a
submenu under Help/Carbide licenses, which contains some menu items for installing, viewing and even borrowing licenses, but
nothing mentioned about buying them. So, after failing to find out how to buy this software, I decided to search for it on the Web!
First, I searched for "order buy Carbide.C++", again, on Forum Nokia - without any success. Okay, there was a bunch of links that I
could have chosen from, but it was not intuitive to pick up the right one.
Then I decided to use the ultimate tool with the same seach query: Google. It was the second link that worked (the first was NewLC - Hi, Eric, how are you doing?:). Surprise, what kind of link was it? A link to a FN Discussion Board topic! Hey, isn't it in the
interest of Nokia to sell their product?! Then, imho, it shouldn't be a *discussion board topic* that advertises it the best (i.e.
being the most popular link) the way of purchasing Carbide.C++, no? Reaching the end of the discussion it finally turned out that
there was a link that anybody can use. Btw, the links mentioned above are as follows:
- Buying Carbide Dev
- Forum Nokia PRO - Company Registration
Another interesting thing is that you have to be a Forum Nokia PRO member for buying the product. That's good, but I was afraid of
the same thing than a few poster were, too: FN PRO registration costs thousands of euros. Per year. Well, I haven't yet completed
the process of purchasing our licenses, however, I'm just hoping that Mike Trujillo (from Forum Nokia) is right: "There is no charge for setting up the account".
Any comments?
Tote
General, S60 |
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S60 E-phones = ugly phones?
tote_b5 | 14 November, 2006 11:54
We had to purchase a couple of mobile phones recently. We want to use them for business purposes. For that reason, I had checked out what our Hungarian mobile operators offered and what's available in Nokia stores nearby. First, we specified the criterion that an ideal business phone must fulfill (not in order):
- WLAN,
- VPN,
- Easy to handle (keys, menus, etc.),
- Good battery life,
- Has memory card,
- Pre-installed apps.
As a mobile geek and big fan of S60 phones, I have made the drastical step of excluding non-S60 phones. Even more, I wanted to deal only with S60 3rd Edition phones. And that limited the list to E- and N-series phones.
As I wrote, we were originally thinking of business phones, that is, devices from the E-series. Well, I checked them out and found that although each supports most of the features we were looking for, there were NONE that fulfilled each criteria. Okay, that's a natural thing, but what was even more interesting (and sad, indeed) that we found basically ALL of them bad-looking, ugly. Which phones am I talking about? Let me list them along with our arguments:
- E50: conservative shape, relatively big display (at least compared to the keyboard size), but small keys and more importantly small fonts on the display. It was very difficult to find out what is on the display.
- E60: this phone has an even more conservative shape. A bit bigger than E50 and both the display and the size of the keys were okay. However, it was not fancy _in any way_ and the keys were so close to each other that it would have been easy to press more than one button at a time. I did not like it at all, at least.
- E61: very big. It's said that the display and the qwerty-style keyboard is big enough and it's easy to use it. However, the size of this phone is so big (even though it's thin), that it wouldn't have fit into my pocket or belt-bag. And I don't want to talk to a phone of half a brick size.
- E70: fold form phone, which I do not really like even though I used it during development. Perhaps that's the reason why I don't like it? :) Also note that, for some reason, it's not available here in Hungary. I was told that there were issues with the software stability, which I couldn't verify. I don't believe rumours, but there must be some reason for not being available in the country.
So, there were 4 E-series phones, which I (and one of my colleagues) disliked. And it was not neccessarily due to the features they do/don't support (2 of 4 did not have camera, for example), but to their shape, form! You know, I wouldn't like to use a phone that I don't like to hold in my hands, even if it supports each and every feature on Earth.
Who told Nokia phone designers that business users don't prefer better looking phones? I think the shape and layout of these phones is overly simple, so simple that it scares some possible users from them. Like us, who finally decided to purchase a few N73. It also has most of the features we wanted to use and you know what? We've changed our mind and re-prioritized the features that we thought it was essential. Now we have a good phone, which we can use for almost everything. Business purposes included.
Tote
- WLAN,
- VPN,
- Easy to handle (keys, menus, etc.),
- Good battery life,
- Has memory card,
- Pre-installed apps.
As a mobile geek and big fan of S60 phones, I have made the drastical step of excluding non-S60 phones. Even more, I wanted to deal only with S60 3rd Edition phones. And that limited the list to E- and N-series phones.
As I wrote, we were originally thinking of business phones, that is, devices from the E-series. Well, I checked them out and found that although each supports most of the features we were looking for, there were NONE that fulfilled each criteria. Okay, that's a natural thing, but what was even more interesting (and sad, indeed) that we found basically ALL of them bad-looking, ugly. Which phones am I talking about? Let me list them along with our arguments:
- E50: conservative shape, relatively big display (at least compared to the keyboard size), but small keys and more importantly small fonts on the display. It was very difficult to find out what is on the display.
- E60: this phone has an even more conservative shape. A bit bigger than E50 and both the display and the size of the keys were okay. However, it was not fancy _in any way_ and the keys were so close to each other that it would have been easy to press more than one button at a time. I did not like it at all, at least.
- E61: very big. It's said that the display and the qwerty-style keyboard is big enough and it's easy to use it. However, the size of this phone is so big (even though it's thin), that it wouldn't have fit into my pocket or belt-bag. And I don't want to talk to a phone of half a brick size.
- E70: fold form phone, which I do not really like even though I used it during development. Perhaps that's the reason why I don't like it? :) Also note that, for some reason, it's not available here in Hungary. I was told that there were issues with the software stability, which I couldn't verify. I don't believe rumours, but there must be some reason for not being available in the country.
So, there were 4 E-series phones, which I (and one of my colleagues) disliked. And it was not neccessarily due to the features they do/don't support (2 of 4 did not have camera, for example), but to their shape, form! You know, I wouldn't like to use a phone that I don't like to hold in my hands, even if it supports each and every feature on Earth.
Who told Nokia phone designers that business users don't prefer better looking phones? I think the shape and layout of these phones is overly simple, so simple that it scares some possible users from them. Like us, who finally decided to purchase a few N73. It also has most of the features we wanted to use and you know what? We've changed our mind and re-prioritized the features that we thought it was essential. Now we have a good phone, which we can use for almost everything. Business purposes included.
Tote
Enterprise, S60 |
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Sony Ericsson to acquire UIQ Technology
tote_b5 | 08 November, 2006 11:07
Interestingly enough, this post is neither about Nokia nor any of their products as you would expect from a Forum Nokia blog post. It's about Sony Ericsson and their press release regarding acquiring UIQ Technology. Many popular mobile blogs (e.g. here, here and here) have already drawn our attention to this piece of great news, but it seems they have all missed to point out a very important consequence of this step.
Or it might be only me who's a little bit worried about Symbian's future? Not that much, but still. You know, I have read couple of articles about the future of mobile operating systems and was a bit worried about that lots of them predict the fall of Symbian in contrast with the rise of Linux. For example, the last report I've read on this topic was made by ARCchart and can be freely downloaded from here: http://www.arcchart.com/reports/mos.asp. They say that one of Symbian's biggest disadvantage is that Nokia owns too much shares in it, which might scare off other manufacturers, mobile companies from licensing it. In contrast with Linux (as they say), which is not suffering from a similar effect, thus might look more desirable for mobile companies. Oddly enough, even Nokia is making experiments in the area of producing mobile devices (Nokia 770, Nokia 330 - not confirmed that latter runs on Linux) with Linux operating system, which might be a base for rumours, too.
So the point in my opinion is that Sony Ericsson's commitment to UIQ might significantly strengthen the position of Symbian OS in the market of mobile operating systems. Not as if Symbian wasn't already in a strong position for the moment, but hopefully it will have positive effects in mid- and long-term plans, too.
Finally note that as I've already written I was in London on the Smartphone Show, where I picked up a booklet from Symbian's booth. The title of the booklet is "The Insight Series with David Wood" (check it out at http://www.symbian.com/symbianos/insight/index.html) and it's about the thoughts of Symbian's EVP for research about basically anything that has something to do with mobility and of course concerns Symbian. What has really captured my attention is a chapter about The hidden value of the mobile operating system. In this chapter, David Wood explains why he thinks that even though Linux is a real alternative on the market of mobile OSs, Symbian doesn't (yet) have to worry about it.
Comments are warmly welcome!
Cheers,
Tote
Or it might be only me who's a little bit worried about Symbian's future? Not that much, but still. You know, I have read couple of articles about the future of mobile operating systems and was a bit worried about that lots of them predict the fall of Symbian in contrast with the rise of Linux. For example, the last report I've read on this topic was made by ARCchart and can be freely downloaded from here: http://www.arcchart.com/reports/mos.asp. They say that one of Symbian's biggest disadvantage is that Nokia owns too much shares in it, which might scare off other manufacturers, mobile companies from licensing it. In contrast with Linux (as they say), which is not suffering from a similar effect, thus might look more desirable for mobile companies. Oddly enough, even Nokia is making experiments in the area of producing mobile devices (Nokia 770, Nokia 330 - not confirmed that latter runs on Linux) with Linux operating system, which might be a base for rumours, too.
So the point in my opinion is that Sony Ericsson's commitment to UIQ might significantly strengthen the position of Symbian OS in the market of mobile operating systems. Not as if Symbian wasn't already in a strong position for the moment, but hopefully it will have positive effects in mid- and long-term plans, too.
Finally note that as I've already written I was in London on the Smartphone Show, where I picked up a booklet from Symbian's booth. The title of the booklet is "The Insight Series with David Wood" (check it out at http://www.symbian.com/symbianos/insight/index.html) and it's about the thoughts of Symbian's EVP for research about basically anything that has something to do with mobility and of course concerns Symbian. What has really captured my attention is a chapter about The hidden value of the mobile operating system. In this chapter, David Wood explains why he thinks that even though Linux is a real alternative on the market of mobile OSs, Symbian doesn't (yet) have to worry about it.
Comments are warmly welcome!
Cheers,
Tote
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Software architect working in Symbian/S60 area since 2000 and still being enthusiastic about mobility. Please visit my introduction page on Forum Nokia Champions web page.
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