Tale of two Wi-Fis

Okay, so I've got my hands on two gadgets. The first is a Nokia N800 Internet tablet, and the second is the Archos 605 WiFi. They both have wireless capabilities and great 800 by 480 pixel touch screens, but that is where the similarities begin to end.



Firstly the Nokia N800 is not a cellphone. It does a lot of things, but its main function is to browse the internet. Now, there are a number of devices which do this, but the N800 has a web browsing experience which is closer to a desktop PC than I've ever seen on a handheld device.

The Archos 605 WiFi is a media player. It is a bit of a stretch to call it a handheld media player, but it is portable enough to carry around if you have big pockets. It also does a lot of things, but its main purpose is a multi-format video player.

Now for my Wi-Fi problem. The Nokia N800 hopped onto my home wireless network as easy as a wireless Pocket PC. The Archos 605 is another story. I have been trying for weeks to get this thing to connect to my home wireless network, but no dice. It sees my neighbor's wireless networks, both the open and encrypted ones, but not mine. To test it I even briefly connected to a neighbor's wireless access point (sorry, default, it was for less than a minute). That worked. I tried disabling all security on my wireless router, but that did not work.

Hopefully, someday soon I will get the wireless working. Until then at least I can still use the Archos 605 to watch videos I guess. Fortunately I have no desire to buy videos from the Archos Content Portal, otherwise I wouldn't be happy. It would be nice to use the other wireless features of the Archos 605 though.

Retro Gaming

Retro Gaming (or Retrogaming as wikipedia prefers to call it) is to quote wikipedia: "the hobby of playing and collecting older computer, video, and arcade games. These games are played either on the original hardware, on modern hardware via emulation, or on modern hardware via ports on compilations".

It makes me feel old to see Tetris and Duke Nukem 3D referred to as Retro or "Classic Games", but it is still a pleasure to be able to play duke Nukem 3D on a handheld, specifically a Tapwave Zodiac (which is almost on its way to becoming a classic handheld). There are two versions of Duke Nukem 3D available for the Tapwave Zodiac, one which is a stripped down version re-written specifically for the Zodiac (and not very good either), and the other a free one which uses the original DOS data files.


Aaah, the retro Tapwave Zodiac for retro gaming... (the one shown above is the silver 28MB Zodiac 1, not the black 128MB Zodiac 2)

Weird patch results

As mentioned yesterday, I applied Daylight Savings Patches to several handhelds.
Well, this morning I checked the results. First was my Tungsten T3, and I was initially dismayed - the screen was displaying the message "Please insert CD to continue with the installation". This was was fairly familiar to me as one of the screens displayed after the hard reset process (I've had more than my fair share of hard resets in the past month). Once I had verified that my programs and data were still there I relaxed a bit. How other Palm users would interpret this message I don't know (Apparently the Palm LifeDrive displays a similar message). Palm should have really tested this patch and advised users what to expect.
My wife's Palm Zire 72 only displayed the standard "Your clock has been adjusted for Daylight Savings Time" message. I had forgotten to turn my Treo 650 off, but it had not automatically updated its time from the wireless network. It only did so when I switched the phone off and on again.