Sony Ericsson

Well, that title should be good for a few Google hits in a couple of days. Thankfully, at least on this occasion it’s relevant.

So, some thoughts on SE phones. I’ve just upgraded to a K700i, and I have to say that on 24 hours use I’m well pleased with it, although (ah, come on, you wouldn’t expect anything else from me) there’s a couple of little niggles with it. Given a week I probably won’t notice or care about them, but moving from Nokia to SE they’re something I’m aware right now.

First of all – and this is such a minor one, it’s almost odd to write it down – the SE doesn’t show when it’s got a GPRS connection. The Nokia did. It was only a little G on the display, not intrusive at all, but when it came to knowing I could get a data connection, it was useful. The K700 doesn’t seem to have that – I’ve got the GPRS set up, no worries (One very nice function is that you can link to the Sony Ericsson site and get the settings sent directly to your phone for whichever call provider you’re using – a lot of time saved for very little effort indeed) but there’s no display to say so. Irritating.

The other one – and I suspect it’s a standard niggle – is that the predictive text key layout is different. Now, I know this is more about useability and so on, but T9 is a standard for the predictive text, and that’s fine – but if it’s a standard then the key layouts should match too. It’s a pain in the arse remembering that what was the space key is now just a zero, and what was the “Shift” to get a capital letter is now the space key. I’ll get used to it – I semi-regularly swap phone makers, rather than just models, and in a week’s time I’ll be back to texting without looking at the keys, but for now it’s a niggle.

One of my colleagues in the office (yes, the twunty manager, before anyone asks) also has an SE phone, but in his case it’s the P910i. And he can’t/won’t change the fucking ringtones, nor take it with him when he leaves the office. The call ringtone is one of the most annoying on the planet – yes, even worse than The Nokia Tone *spit*. SE in their wisdom have come up with what they call a “corporate” ringtone known imaginatively as “Ring, Ring, Ring”. I won’t be cruel and include a soundfile of it, because it’d drive you crackers – but it’s a woman’s voice ‘singing’ “Ring, Ring, Ring, wooo-hooo-oooooo, Ring Ring Ring”. Loudly, warbly, and just slightly out of tune. It’s incredibly annoying, and the twat won’t change it.

I’ve threatened to change it for him (although this may involve dropping it from a very great height) and this didn’t go down well. The twunt says he likes it. I wouldn’t be surprised if this were true, but equally I wouldn’t be surprised if the full sentence were “I like it because I can’t change it, and thus have to tolerate it”.

So – decent phone, but with some fuck-awful ringtones. Luckily mine’s already been changed. I did that first of all. Hmmm, I wonder if The Twunt understands Polish, if I change languages on his phone?

Ideal Home – again

Well, the Ideal Home Show was interesting, to say the least. Lots of ideas have been forthcoming, and it looks like a bit of website business may be on the way too. Some surprise was expressed that I was prepared to find some business while out on a fun day “off”, but well, what the hell, spot an opportunity and exploit it – that’s my theory, and I’m sticking with it.

I didn’t get any photos, unfortunately, but the place was so frigging busy I wasn’t going to be able to get much that didn’t involve having people scattered all over, which really wasn’t the mood I was going for. So yeah, no photos.

But we did have a good time – the logic of the layout is completely beyond me, sticking all the fancy guff on the ground floor, then having all the demonstrations upstairs in the narrower parts where people, by nature, stop and watch, thus blocking the entire fucking walkway. Genius. I’d like to find the person who came up with that concept and give them a bloody good kicking – and I can’t be the only one. I figure it must affect the sales and demonstrations too, because unless you can get people passing through fairly quickly you’re only going to see a percentage of any day’s custom, rather than all of it. Maybe I’m wrong, but if I were exhibiting there, it would be an issue that would piss me off. Paying God only knows how much to exhibit there (and let’s not forget it’s near as dammit a month of being there!) and yet probably missing a fair percentage of potential sales would certainly be a cause for being pissed off.

Anyway, that aside, it was actually a really good day. I wouldn’t say that anyone should go every year, or anything like that, but it’s definitely worth going. Hell, even just with balancing the cost of food (definitely take your own lunch, it’ll save you a shedload!) and drinks against the freebies we got, I’d say we probably broke even. And with the potential for some work, I probably came out well ahead of the game! Always a good thing…