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So I picks me up a new Q, the Motorola Q9m earlier this month… And so far, I like it. Here’s why:

New things that make this phone a joy to use:

1. Faster*. Definitely faster*. The old Q was slow. If you wanted to view text messages or email, the little loading wheel would come up for a while. Navigating between screens is definitely faster. So what’s the * for? Well, Qs do this thing where they never ever make you get rid of text messages. I did a software upgrade / system reset on the old Q in January of this year. Assume I receive 20msgs a day and send 20msgs a day: 40msgs/day * 30days/month * 8months = approx 9600 messages on the Q by the end of August. I would assume this is why it was slow loading the text message list, but I still don’t know if it slows down the entire system. I wasn’t running out of space as everything else was stored on my 1gig SD memory card.
2. Text/Email Searching – Thank you, thank you, thank you… I don’t know how many times I wanted to be able to search the aforementioned 9600 text messages for critical information such as a txt’d phone number, password, house address, pin number, etc… all you have to do is navigate to a message list (any email account or your text message list) and start typing. The list will shorten as per your search and the string you’re typing will be highlighted. Wicked handy…
3. New Keyboard - The only thing new about the physical hardware, aside from the black/red colors, is the new style keyboard. Instead of little, separated capsule-shaped keys, the keyboard is flatter and the keys are all touching. It’s much easier to type on and the phone is no bigger in size.
4. Better Battery Life / Light Sensor - On the old Q, which I used the crap out of, I had the standard battery and 2 extended-life batteries, as well as the dock to charge everything. An extended life battery, which I used probably 95% of the time over the standard one, lasted about a day of use. I would have to charge it while I slept and probably while I was at my desk throughout the day. The new Q is much different. First off, I currently only have the standard battery for it. I am in the habit of charging while I sleep, and usually I go to bed with 2 out of 3 bars of battery left. In the top right corner of the phone there is a little light sensor that helps with the battery problem. In bright light, the screen is as bright as can be, but the keyboard back-light is off. In a dark room, the screen is dim but still perfectly visible and the keyboard back-light is on. I know they stole this from the Apple MacBook Pro, but I don’t care. It makes my phone last longer and I love it.

New things that don’t affect me or I don’t care about, but I’m not complaining:

1. Documents to Go - The ability to view AND edit office documents on the phone is a great feature. The old Q would actually take the .doc file, send it to a web service, and show you a pdf, which you could not modify. Now you can create documents from scratch (although I would probably kill myself if I had to edit docs on the phone). The tools are PDF To Go, Sheet To Go, Slideshow To Go, Word to Go and Zip To Go.
2. Windows Mobile 6 - The new os is like any other new Micro$oft OS. It just is. There’s nothing to scream about. I still don’t know if it’s new hardware or the new OS that’s making my phone usage faster, or a combination of the two (or the text message thing mentioned above) but I like it either way. I like WM6 better than a blackberry. While I’ve never owned a Blackberry, I’ve used many, the interface on this is just much more intuitive.
3. VCast - The major push by Verizon on this phone is that it is VCast capable. Apparently you can download ringtones, videos, mp3s, etc… Frankly, I can download an MP3, use my SD card to move it from my laptop to my phone, and use that as a ringtone. So I never use it.

Not many, but a few complaints:

1. Where the F is the Camera Key - There is no camera key on the keyboard. Believe me, I’ve looked… It’s been replaced by the VCast Homepage button. This button, when hit, takes you to the circular VCast page where you can access your MP3s and crap. Yes, you can get to your camera here, but it takes about 5 seconds to load that homepage. So whatever I saw while I was at the bar that I wanted to snap a picture of is already gone. Why did you get rid of the camera key, Motorola/Verizon? Why?
2. Internet Explorer - I hate IE. I absolutely hate it as a browser on a desktop machine both as a common desktop user and a website developer. My hate is no different for the phone version. This hate became more fierce after using an iPhone. I’m not a big fan of the iPhone, but the safari browser on that thing is so cool… You can view a web page, with forms, css, images. That brings me to the next problem…
3. No JVM - this is a complaint now, but it may be resolved later. Initially, I wanted to install the opera browser (because I hate IE, see above). Opera is not WM6 ready yet, but hopefully that will be fixed soon. The only way to get Opera installed on a phone like mine is to install a Java Virtual Machine. But there is no JVM for my phone either. So I’m screwed from both sides… Please, Opera, build your browser for my phone and make it better than IE (not hard to do).

So the tally is 4 things that make my life so much better, but 3 strikes against it. BUT, the old Q had the same IE problem and the same JVM problem, so there’s really only 1 complaint: the camera button. If you’re looking to upgrade to a PDA, the Q9m is awesome. If you have a current Q, don’t pay to upgrade, but use your “new every 2″ when you can. I love it and I wouldn’t change it for any other PDA available from Verizon right now.

I’m struggling to pick up Ubuntu. I guess I just want to be in the in crowd. So I thought I’d document my trials for those that wish to make fun of me.

The groundwork
I purchased a Dell XPS M1710 laptop back in June. When I got it, like any good nerd would, I formatted it out of the box, partitioned it, reinstalled Vista Business and installed Ubuntu Edgy (I had it laying around). A month or so later, I upgraded to Feisty, and just recently I followed the upgrade recommendations found on Ubuntu Forums to Ubuntu Studio – Graphics Edition (instead of video or audio, this has Photoshop, Illustrator – like programs, which I’m more prone to using). So now I’m using the 2.6.20-16 kernel with Ubuntu Studio (not the low-latency audio kernel, which is apparently prone to crashing).

The F*ck up
I moved too fast. Either that, or I did something wrong. I tried to first install Beryl and get it to run on boot, then installed Studio, then removed Beryl and Compiz because they weren’t working right. After hours and hours of figuring out why my window manager was crashing, I finally found a great blog detailing how to upgrade to Compiz Fusion. This had me remove all the spare Beryl and Compiz stuff I had laying around, showed me how to actually install Compiz Fusion and even how to run Emerald window manager by default on boot. Now my machine is slick looking, just like those who actually know what they’re doing.

Miscellaneous Helpful Info
So now that the boring crap is over, I thought I’d detail some other useful information that I’ve come across along the way.

• Wireless Card
  • The Dell wireless card I have didn’t work so swell in Ubuntu. I think it’s too new maybe? I had to install the ndiswrapper to get it to work correctly. Follow these guidelines on the Ubuntu forums.
• Use apt-get with tab completion.
  • Commands such as ’sudo apt-get install <app name>’ is the easy way to use the command line to get new applications. If you just type the beginning of what you want, you can smack the tab key a few times to get suggestions as to what you want to install.
• SUPER! Remap the cube
  • In Linux world, the “Windows Key” is known as the “Super” key. It’s not used for anything useful by default, so it’s just waiting to do your bidding. If you go to System > Preferences > Key Mapping, there’s definitely many things you can map it to do. I’ve also gone into my Compiz Config (terminal command: ccms) and mapped my cube rotation to Super-Q for left and Super-W for right. It’s way easier to do that than to hold ctrl-alt and hit left/right to rotate it.
• Pidgin Instant Messenger
  • I’m not a fan of the default GAIM instant messenger installed with Ubuntu. I removed it installed Pidgin instead. This is purely personal preference, but try it, I bet you like it better than GAIM.
  • For some reason, the .bz2 file threw me for a loop. Then I found these easy step-by-step directions. Problem Solved.
• Avant Window Navigator – How to Mac up your Linux
  • I’ve installed this AVN because I’m not too fond of the default menu structure. As of right now, I’m only really using 3 things on Ubuntu regularly: the Terminal, Firefox & Pidgin Instant Messenger. Installing AVN is simple, configuring it is a little buggy, but if you get it set up like you like it then log out and back in, it’s pretty stable. (note: do this after you upgrade to Compiz Fusion). It looks a lot cooler if you turn on the “3d effect”
• Slick Terminal
  • Ubunut Unleashed has a great article on making an embedded terminal using compiz. Follow it to a T and you can make a wicked useful terminal on every desktop. One thing I noticed, however, is that in their tutorial they don’t tell you to turn off the scroll bar in the “trans” terminal profile you create. Click over to the scroll tab in the profiles dialog box and turn off scrolling. It looks much better that way.

Work… The reason I own a machine.
Next task is to switch over to using Ubuntu for work. Being a web developer, it’s not that difficult. So far, I’ve installed Eclipse Development Environment. You can easily install that through Synapic Package Manager. I also use Subversion Version Control, but I don’t like Eclipse’s implementation of it. On Windows, I use Tortoise SVN so I wanted something that integrates into Nautilus (Linux’s Windows Explorer). I found plugin that uses Nautilus Scripts that works better for me (again, personal preference). Here’s what I have left to replace:

• Mail
  • I use Outlook on Windows, but it’s Pop3, not imap. I have to switch over my mail usage to IMAP so both sides stay in sync. Once I do that, I’ll research alternative email clients, but probably just stick to the default.
• Backup
  • Mozy Remote Backup backs up all my business files (not site files, just invoices, checks, etc…) I’ll have to see how i can utilize an offsite backup in Linux
• Flash
  • Some of the work I do uses the Flash IDE which isn’t available for Linux. I’ll have to figure out how to run it using WINE or something like that, so I can open my .flas without rebooting.
• Database
  • In windows, I use Navicat MySQL to connect to all my client’s servers. It has this handy http/php tunnel feature which allows me to use it without having my cliens open up ssh tunnels to connect through or using that crappy phpMyAdmin software. Believe me, once you use Navicat, you’ll never go back. There is a for-purchase version of Navicat for Linux, but I want to research non-pay software first. I’ve had emma recommended to me, but that doesn’t have the tunneling, so I’ll just keep looking.

So, I’ll keep looking. I know anyone can use Ubuntu. I just hope I’m as smart as the next guy…