Sunday Funnies: Using a smart phone as a diagnostic tool

Mon Feb 28 14:51:39 UTC 2011

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Joshua William Klubi" <joshua.klubi at gmail.com>

> On Mon, Feb 28, 2011 at 2:00 AM, Jay Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > Do you have a smartphone? Blackberry? iPhone? Android?
> 
> Try a Nokia N900 Maemo device,

I've had an n800 for about 3 years now.  Original battery, even, though
it is time for a replacement.  I passed on the n810 for a bunch of
reasons, though.  Didn't like the carrier selection for the n900.

> > Do you use it as a technical tool in your work, either for accessing
> > devices or testing connectivity -- or something else?
> 
> yes if ur a real IT person and your very well versed in terms
> of knowledge and you use
> gadgets then you should know it is a swiss knife among all mobile
> devices.

I'll use here a phrase that's current at the TV network where I work,
used when someone who's getting paid to make the show suddenly discovers
something everyone else in the room already knew:

"Welcome to the show."

> you can easily compare the difference, with N900 you don't need all
> those APP markets
> you have all the apps develop for Linux at your disposal, just use
> apt-get and then ur done.

Though as with all Application Managers, they make backout hell; I use
FBreader on my n800 as probably my primary app... and the newest build
has a couple of *really* nasty bugs.  And it's a pain in the *ass* to 
go back to an older build, without getting married to every detail of
how the appmgr works.

Or going off the reservation, after which you'll be prompted to 'upgrade'
forever...

> > HTC thunderbolt is not a bad looking phone. one most important thing
> > about
> all the mobile
> phone devices out there it is only Nokia that support full networking
> stack
> of IPV6 on it
> no hacking needed to get it running.

Note that the Thunderbolt will be an LTE700 phone, and therefore (or
so I'm told) natively IPv6 on the air-interface; this will likely make
that less of a problem than on older phones.

Cheers,
-- jra