Recently I bought myself a Benq P50 (Read here the earlier post). After spending time to set everything up - ActiveSync, Contacts, etc. using it for few weeks, I realised the following:

• The phone is lovely, colors are brilliant
• Decent Browsing and usable Wi-Fi speed

• Phone is very heavy in your pocket, you got to use the belt clip to carry it
• The keyboard keys are too small - but you can get used to it after few weeks of usage. First few weeks, you will end up pressing two keys at once
• The documentation sucks big time. It leaves much to be desired. It is too shallow when it comes to First time user of Windows Mobile and is non-existent for advanced options
• The battery life is pathetic. So far the maximum I could get was 6 to 8 hours Standby with about average of 20 minutes talk time
• Radio is poor. Many times I see 5 full bars of network signal, but people get "Subscriber could not be reached" message
• The main usability problem was the phone doesn't have a Keypad Lock, so when I put the phone in the belt clip the dial key gets pressed accidentaly all the time and the phone dials the last dialed number - Kind of like Artificial intellegence. The workaround I found was to dial a non existing number like 4, each time before you place the phone in the clip. Pressing he space bar does bring the screensaver and locks the keypad but the dial key is still active and a small tap in the screen brings the keypad also active. After weeks of frustration I found out that you can gently press the power button once to put the phone in stand-by before keeping it in the clip which shuts down the screen, locks the dial key and all the other keypad keys. Too counter intutive.

So overall this phone is better to be left in the Shop Window; but with next version if BenQ fixes the above, upgrades the phone OS to Windows Mobile 5.0 then the phone has the potential to be a big hit.

I am now shopping for a new phone. I am considering Nokia 9300i, N70 and 6681. Last one week I had been using a friends' Nokia 9300 Communicator - seems to love the phone, especially the form factor, keyboard layout, email support. Though there are some nuisances like non existence of Vibrate mode, few quick shortcuts available in Series 60 phones especially with Address Book and SMS, the main features that are missing are Camera and Wi-Fi. I am awaiting for Nokia 9300i in India. If I get tired of waiting, i will go probably for Nokia 6681.

All this is not to say the Windows Mobile OS is bad, but the manufacturer (BenQ) seems to have got it all wrong in the device implementation. Proves the point that you shouldn't be the lab rat and wait for the few versions of a phone before buying it. I willl buy my next Windows Mobile only if it was made by one of the big manufactures like Palm or HP or better still Nokia

While hearing the announcement in PDC '05 for MS Expression and Visual Studio (Orcas) set of web designer IDEs  and playing with Office 12, I had mixed reactions. The positive was Expression and Orcas going full throttle with supporting XHTML and other web standards, at the same time introducing awesome new features that makes web development easy. My dissappointed was for lack of no such new standards support with the popular MS Web Designer product - MS Frontpage. I have been a fan of Frontpage even before MS bought the product and had built several websites using it. But over the last few years I was forced to switch to Visual Studio and other 3rd Party products as Frontpage was stagnating.  Also MS was confusing with two product streams - both aimed at doing Website Development.

Today all my fears and criticism was put to rest with the Announcement of Sharepoint Designer 2007 replacing MS Frontpage. Sharepoint Designer will be supporting all web standards including XHTML and full CSS compliance. In the same press release MS has clarified the position and the roles played by this new product and Expression Web Designer.

May MS Frontpage's soul RIP (Rest in Place)

Today MS also announced the final naming for Office "12" (Codename) as MS Office 2007 and the packaging, pricing of Office 2007. Thank god, they didn't name it "Office Vista"

IT and Computer Science Students doing their Engineering/Arts/Science Graduation courses can participate in a competition organized by KTS (Kani Thamizh Sangam) and Tamil Virtual University. It can be their final semester project but it should be in Tamil computing. The three best projects in 2006-07 will get cash prizes worth Rs.50,000. For details and application form, click here.

I feel the timing for this is very apt, as the commercial viability of Tamil Software projects is showing signs of finally picking up. OS vendors like Microsoft and Redhat are now supporting Tamil in many ways in their offerings. This week saw Tally (India's Leading Package Software) announcing availability of vernacular editions of its accounting software. For Tamil computing enthusiasts like me and others in INFITT and KTS this is great news - many have been working hard for last two decades for things like this to start happening and take computers to the masses in Tamilnadu. Though other commercial company’s will follow suit, in order to accelerate this trend and innovate in this it is very important to get the young minds excited and I believe this competition will certainly do that. My wishes to the organizers and the students.

In this connection KTS and TVU have organized a one day workshop – Tamil Computing Technology on February 25 at Meenakshi Sundararajan Engineering College. Topics include Tamil fonts and encoding, government initiatives in e-governance, tools and technologies, Microsoft's language applications, open source and job opportunities. Details can be had from http://www.kanithamizh.in/ or www.tamilvu.org. I have been invited to speak in the workshop panel on “Microsoft’s Language Applications” from 3:30PM to 4:15PM. See you there.

Yesterday I attended MSN - NDTV Party. The party was to celebrate 5th Anniversary of MSN in India and announcing the Sales Partnership between the two companies and the new India country manager for MSN India - Mr Jaspreet Bindra. Many industry and media stalwarts were also present.

The party was at Rampart Row, Kalaghoda of Mumbai – Kalaghoda seems to be an exclusive street full of party joints, restaurants and pubs. It was fun!.

Today I was a member in a panel discussion on “IT World – India’s Lead Sustainable”. The programme was part of Synapse ’05 organized by Department of Management Studies - School of Management, Pondicherry University in partnership with CII. I had the opportunity to share the dais with:

- Dr. Kuppu Swamy S, Dean- Ramanujam School of Mathematics and Computer Sciences, Pondicherry University
- Mr. Punit Dhandhania, VP - Strategy & Business Development, SPI Publisher services
- Mr. Subramanyan N K, Head - Banking & Financial Services, BirlaSoft
- Mr. Shankar Krishnamoorthy, VP - Aspire Systems

Though I had to spend a day (Started the day before from Chennai and stayed overnight for the next day morning programme) on travel for a 15 minute presentation, it was quite motivating to participate in the programme. I could get to listen to others from Industry and to the students.

I am normally very curious and interested in hearing from students (the Potential managers) as they come with a new perspective, a fresh approach and not clouded by industry experience. Even here the students had interesting questions on the Resource Utilization that is reported by IT Companies in their Quarterly results (For Example: INFY Recently reported 78%, will it become 100% ever?).  Then there was the usual question on India improving on the product space - I answered what I believe to be one of the reasons that is Indian’s are normally risk averse especially the urban Indian middle class (who presently dominate the IT Services Industry). Dr.T.Nambirajan from the faculty raised a relevant issue of depleting health condition of individuals working in IT due to work pressure and night shifts.

Nowadays as an audience I avoid attending these panel discussions as I believe you get very little useful information – because of the fact the time given to a speaker to express his views are very limited (< 15 mins). On top of it the organizers get many speakers, the moderator taking most of the time in re explaining what was already told, the first few speakers overshooting there time multifold, each speaker speaking the same point or rehashing what is known to everyone – like you don’t need a speaker to say that India’s Export Turnover in IT last year was $XY Billion the audience have assess to the same Nasscom/STPI report on the Internet. Hopefully today was different and the audience got some tiny bit useful information.  I suggested to the organizers the next time to improve things in their invite letters to panelists they can give a list of things that need not be covered – list of things/figures/backgrounds the audience already know. Also a template of the presentation format they are expecting from the speakers for 15 minutes.

I wish good luck to the students of the batch and thank the organizers for inviting me.

Download the Presentation I used it world - india's lead sustainable.ppt (172.5 KB)

Few Days back MS released Internet Explorer 7.0 Beta 2 Preview. Though RSS feeds, Tabbed Browsing, Improved Security are the highlights what I love about this release are the following:

• The super clean interface - beats FireFox hands down!
• Launch of the browser and loading of the page - being extremely fast
• Being more accurate in standards compliant, CSS friendly
• Finally a Print function that works as advertised
• All pop-up windows displaying the full path (URL)

I am sure most of you would have tried one of the free desktop search applications like Google Desktop Search, MSN Desktop Search or Copernic. These work great for home users and for those who have all the files in their laptops/desktops. For those in Enterprises where most of the corporate data is stored in central file shares or in Sharepoint servers, till now there was no convenient way to search both Desktop and Enterprise data. Recently MS released the free Windows Desktop Search for Enterprise that does everything the MSN Desktop Search does plus has the ability to search Sharepoint sites and File shares.

Configuring this can be little tedious - my good friend and Sydney RD Adam Cogan has written this good guide on doing it, check it out here.

Today was a shocking day for all of us at Vishwak - at 8:45AM we lost to fate, one of our coworker "Kumaresh Prasanna", aged 29.  He was being treated in Malar Hospital and was fighting for his life last two weeks.

Being a true team player, Prasanna was always there to help others with a smiling face.

Please join me in praying for his soul to rest in peace and to give his parents, brother and friends strength to overcome this.

Losses like this makes us appreciate how fleeting is our life...