Hard to believe that another one of the computers that had such an impact on my life is now thirty years old, I don’t feel old enough for anything I remember so well to be 30 years ago. After the Sinclair ZX81 and the Spectrum that followed it our next family computer was the BBC Micro Model B, it was an amazing computer for its time and remained in use for many years, I still have the same one today (that’s it on the right).

Made by Acorn Computers for the BBC as part of the BBC Computer Literacy Project it won out over the competition, including Sinclair, to build a computer for the BBC to use as part of its series to educate people about computers. The story behind the battle to win the contract was dramatised in the very enjoyable Micro Men programme that was shown as part of the Electric Revolution season on BBC Four in 2009. If you didn’t see it at the time it is well worth a watch.

Affectionately known as the Beeb, the BBC Micro was a 6502 based 8-bit micro with 16k or 32k RAM depending on the model, it ran at a relatively fast (for the time) 2MHz and it had a proper, robust keyboard, a plethora of connectivity options and a key factor in its success was the comparitively sophisticated BBC BASIC. Unlike most computers that followed it the Beeb also came with a proper manual, a thick ring bound affair that was actually a proper guide to BASIC programming. The Advanced User Guide available separately covered things in more detail including 6502 machine code and even contained a full circuit diagram.

Along with the accompanying television programmes and thanks to most schools choosing the BBC Micro it went on to become the corner stone of computing education throughout the 80s, together with the time then given to computing in the school curriculum it gave kids of my generation a grounding in computers that hasn’t really been seen since.

I spent many happy hours with the Beeb and learnt a lot both in and out of school. These were the days when you were taught how to program a computer at school rather than just operate one as sadly seems to be the case in these days of ICT classes that just teach kids how to use programs such as Word and Powerpoint.

The BBC Micro also gave me my first experience of networked computers, something that would become so important in later life. After one summer holiday we were excited to return to school to find we now had a dedicated computer room full of BBC Micros all networked with econet, much fun ensued and a little good natured mischief (netmess anyone?). A year or so later myself and several friends ran a teletext type information system (using the little known Mikefax software) that was used at open nights and sports days and eventually had a dedicated screen in the school entrance hall. My first experience of publishing information electronically.

The BBC Micro also brought my first exposure to computer communications, first using a 1200/75 baud modem and later a Watford LeModem to connect to local bulletin board systems and services such as Micronet800, Telecom Gold and Prestel (often using dodgy logins aquired from a BBS) and look where that ended up.

As with many of my generation I owe a lot to the BBC Micro and what it taught me and as many others have commented recently, this sort of thing is missing from the lives of most kids these days. Projects such as Coding For Kids, Raspberry Pi and the recently launched Goto Foundation can hopefully do something to help turn this around.

This post is a bit late but I wanted to make sure I was settled in my decision on Unity, Ubuntu’s new desktop. I had been running Ubuntu Natty Narwhal on my test box since before the first alpha so I was quite familiar with Unity and its quirks and initially I wasn’t a fan at all. It seemed ugly, feature lacking and buggy and throughout the alpha and beta period it seemed that it was just being rushed out to meet the 11.04 release regardless of whether it was ready or not. I didn’t think I would be using it and had even given serious consideration to going back to Debian testing for my main desktop box.

Anyway, with the final release of 11.04 I duly upgraded my main desktop machine and thought I would give it a go as my day to day desktop for a while, fully expecting to switch back to the “classic desktop” (ie. Gnome 2.x) before long but it didn’t happen and I have to say that Unity has grown on me. I’m not missing any of the things I thought I would and so far I’m even managing to live with the one thing about Unity that annoyed me the most during testing, namely the Global Menu.

For those not aware the Global Menu is the Apple style feature where each applications menu appears in the top panel instead of within the application itself. I understand Apple’s original reasoning behind this feature, ie. the menu is always in a consistent place and slamming the mouse to the top of the screen puts you in the right place but in a modern multiple monitor environment it just doesn’t stand up, that and it is currently inconsistent as it requires every app to support it. App support will get better over time I’m sure but I still think it is irrepairably broken on multiple monitors. Fortunately for those that really can’t stand it, the global menu can be disabled without too much effort but I am still trying to live with it for now to see if I can get used to it.

The other niggle with Unity that hadn’t really bothered me until I started to use it properly is the scroll bars. With a traditional scroll bar you can move your mouse to the right of the window and click to jump up/down at any point along the permenantly visible bar whereas with the new hidden scroll bar you have to look for the thin indicator and hover your mouse over that before you can access the scroll controls. It’s definitely slower and harder to use and as with the global menu it is inconsistent at the moment as not all applications use it.

The new dock on the left I wasn’t keen on initially and I missed the old task list panel at the bottom but now I’ve got used to it I actually prefer the dock, it seems quicker and gets less cluttered. The only change I’ve made is to make it narrower with smaller icons as it is a bit large by default.

In summary Unity is a mixed bag, it’s far from the disaster I thought it would be but it’s not the second coming either. There is still a lot that could be improved but I think it will get there, the issue of the duplication of effort between Unity and the very similar Gnome 3 is a completely different topic though.

Photo credit: WEBmikey

The legendary Sinclair ZX81 was launched 30 years ago today. It might have only had black and white output with only upper case text, blocky graphics, 1K of RAM, no sound and a membrane keyboard but the ZX81 will always have a special place in my heart as it was the first computer I ever used and the beginning of my obsession with computers and technology in general. I still have one in my collection of old computers.

The ZX81 was hugely successful for its time and was the first affordable mass market home computer available in the UK, it kick started a whole community of enthusiasts and companies that exploded the computing scene in the 1980s. I spent many many happy hours with the ZX81. I learned BASIC programming on it and clearly remember the arduous task of typing in programs from magazines such as ZX Computing and then trying to debug them or wait for the corrections in the next months issue, and the ordeal of saving and loading programs from a C15 cassette tape – the addition of an inline level meter helped immensely there.

Our ZX81 was gradually expanded with the notoriously wobbly 16K RAM pack and the “tin foil” ZX Printer and eventually boasted a full size dk’tronics keyboard which made all the difference. When my dad bought a Spectrum 48K a year later the ZX81 was relocated to my bedroom as my personal computer where it enjoyed another year or so of use before being replaced by the Spectrum (by then also sporting a dk’tronics keyboard and a Microdrive among other extras.) when the family computer was upgraded to a BBC Micro Model B. Many years later I bought another original ZX81 for my computer collection.

Like many of my generation the ZX81 had a huge influence on me and I feel privileged to have grown up during a time that computers grew from basic systems like the ZX81 to what we have today, it gives one an appreciation of where we have come from that younger generations don’t have. Thank you Sir Clive for bringing us the ZX81 and thank you dad for having the foresight to buy one.

This afternoon I shall be celebrating by powering up my ZX81 for the first time in a few years.

Wikipedia has a really good article on the ZX81.

The Advent Vega is a £250 Android tablet from the DSG group which has been hotly anticipated since its announcement a couple of months ago. The specification is high for the price point with a 10.1″ widescreen LCD with capacitive touchscreen, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, front facing camera, HDMI output, USB port and Micro SD slot. The processor is a dual core Nvidia Tegra T20 running at 1 GHz and the custom Android 2.2 (Froyo) install runs brilliantly on it as you would expect.

Hardware
Battery life is great with a claimed 6.5 hours of HD video playback and early testing seems to back that up. Build quality is very good and the 10.1″ LCD is bright with vivid colours and a 16:9 aspect ratio making it ideal for video, it is only let down slightly by the viewing angle which isn’t great in the vertical plane but is still perfectly acceptable. Unlike most tablets in this price range the touchscreen is capacitive, supports multitouch and responds very well. There is no oleophobic coating so it can be a bit of a fingerprint magnet.

Unusually for Android hardware there are no hardware home or menu buttons, just a back button on the top right hand edge next to the orientation lock and power button, instead the home, menu and another back button are on the customised notification bar at the top of the touchscreen. Additionally, a long press of the hardware back button also functions as menu and a long press of the power button brings up the shutdown menu which also includes a home option. Holding the power button for 6 seconds or show shuts the unit off straight away.

The lack of dedicated buttons is a strange design decision and possibly a sign that the hardware wasn’t originally designed with Android in mind. I would certainly have preferred the three standard hardware buttons but it is something I was aware of and can live with. To the left of the power button is the built in microphone which I’ve tried with the Skype test call feature and it seems to be quite decent.

Moving on with the hardware, on the right hand edge we have the power socket, a flap concealing the full size HDMI port, USB port (slave only, type A) and the Micro SD slot (a 4GB card is included), a 3.5mm headphone socket and finally, the volume controls.

The stereo speakers are fitted at the bottom of the back cover and sound reasonable for the size. A front facing camera is situated in the top of the bezel surrounding the screen, it’s only 1.3 Mega-pixel and for some unknown reason outputs a mirror image but it is better than nothing and will be fine for video chat using Fring etc. Finally, on the bottom edge is a port for a forthcoming dock/stand (front picture), price yet to be announced.

Behind the scenes we’ve got that NVIDIA T20 Tegra 2 Dual Core processor (actually a system-on-a-chip with utilising a dual core Cortex A9 variant) running at 1 GHz, 512MB RAM, 512MB ROM, 802.11b/g WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. Not too shabby at all.

Software
The Vega runs the latest version of Android, 2.2 aka Froyo. Other than the addition of the home, menu and back buttons to the notification bar already mentioned a few other minor modifications have been made to Android to make it more suitable for a tablet, small things such as removing the GSM signal icon and other irrelevant phone references. Overall, it is very slick and a big jump from most of the cheaper Android tablets we’ve seen on the market so far, Flash 10.1 is included and works fine with iPlayer, TVCatchup, YouTube etc and the standard media player is hardware accelerated for the Tegra 2 and has played everything I’ve thrown at it flawlessly.

As with all Android tablets that don’t have 3G the biggest downside with the out of the box setup is the lack of the Android Market and other Google apps such as GMail, Maps and YouTube. I believe this is because Google will currently only allow their apps on systems with a minimum hardware spec that includes GSM/3G communications, traditionally this has been done to make sure all Market apps will work fully so as to maintain the user experience. Hopefully this should change with the imminent Gingerbread (Android 2.3) release rumoured to be due soon. Google have recently introduced a method for developers to state whether their apps require certain features such as GSM or GPS in order to run which will prevent applications appearing for devices on which they won’t run properly and thus maintaining a smooth user experience.

As expected it didn’t take long (less than 24 hours) for the community to come up with a way to get the Market and Google apps running on the Vega, in this case it was Paul at MoDaCo and due to the way the Vega ROMS are updated it is very easy to do with no rooting required. It’s also risk free – you can always reflash to a stock ROM if you want and the official Advent Vega Twitter feed has said in response to enquiries about this voiding the warranty that their warranty is on the hardware and have even made suggestions for finding ways round the Market issue which shows they don’t have an issue with it. To install the Android Market and Google apps head on over to the MoDaCo forums here, it takes no more than a couple of minutes to do but note that your Vega must be running the official 1.4 ROM before installation, mine came with 1.3 installed but the 1.4 update is available here and is easy to update with one slight annoyance being that it requires a Windows PC to do (the MoDaCo mod is Windows/Linux/Mac compatible). Once I had done the mod the next thing I did was to install LauncherPro which is much better than the standard launcher with many customisation options and allows a lot more widgets and icons to be installed on the home screens and provides a lot of extra features similar to those provided by HTC Sense.

Verdict
I’m very pleased with it and I think it is amazing value for money at £250 with the caveat that the mods from MoDaCo are a must, I waited to make sure adding the Market was possible before buying and wouldn’t have bought it otherwise so bear that in mind. I’d have liked it to have had proper Home, Menu and Back buttons and the camera could be improved but neither are a deal breaker. At the moment the only close contender in this price range seems to be the Archos 101 at around £270 but it only has half the RAM of the Vega which is going to affect performance and limit future OS upgrades.

Where to get one
At the moment the Vega is only available online through the PC World, Currys or Dixons websites in limited numbers as and when stock is available. If you want to get your hands on one the best bet at the moment is to follow @AdventVega on Twitter and keep an eye out for their announcements.

As is the way with these things DSG don’t actually make the hardware, the Vega is a branded version of a tablet known as the P10AN01 from Japanese ODM WSL and some other variations are starting to appear such as this one from Expansys and I’m sure more will follow in time.

Advent Vega Specifications:

• NVIDIA T20 Tegra 2 Dual Core Cortex A9 running at 1 GHz
• 10.1″ 1024 x 600 capacitive touchscreen with multitouch
• 512MB RAM, 512MB ROM, 4GB microSD (supports up to 32GB)
• 802.11b/g WLAN
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
• USB port
• HDMI output
• 1.3MP camera
• Battery life: LCD off: 16hrs, 1080p Video: 6.5hrs, Standby: 4 days
• Size: 275 x 178 x 13.6 mm (W x D x H)
• Weight: Approx. 700-750 g

Photo credit: jyri

Anyone with a Google Apps account (aka Google Apps for Your Domain or GAFYD) will be familiar with the discrepancies regarding certain Google services and their availability to Apps users. Google Reader for example requires a normal Google Account, an Apps account won’t do. The way round this is to create a separate Google Account using your Apps email address but this leaves you with two separate accounts with no integration and duplication of some services such as Google Docs. All in all it is a mess.

I came across a doozy of a problem this week though. I recently switched from an iPhone to the HTC Desire which of course runs the Google backed Android OS. Android is pretty tightly integrated with Google, offering automatic email, calendar and contacts syncing among other features and very good it is too.

All went swimmingly until after a week I came across an app I wanted that wasn’t free so I clicked on “buy” in the Android market only to be presented with a selection of strange, yet somehow familiar credit cards to use to make the purchase. This threw me for a minute until I realised they were cards that belong to the company I work for and were assigned to a Google Checkout account associated with my work gmail account. An account I had added to my Desire after adding my personal Google Apps account. Nowhere did the Android Market indicate that it had “chosen” this account.

So how do I switch to my personal apps account? This turned out to be a bit problematic. Actually it’s worse than that, it isn’t possible. A Google Apps account can’t purchase from the Android Market even if you have created a Google Account using the same email address and it is a known, long term problem. I found a workaround here, but it wouldn’t work for me as I’d already added my work gmail account to my phone and that was taking precedence. So, the obvious solution is to delete my work gmail account from my phone yes? No! Android won’t let me delete that account unless I do a factory reset (and lose all data on the phone) because it is “required by some apps”.

In the end I took the easy way out and added my credit card to the Google Checkout account associated with my work gmail account which now leaves me with the risk of accidentally paying for a work purchase with my personal card or purchasing an app using a work card.

I know Google have recently made noises that they are working on sorting this nonsense out but it needs sorting like yesterday!

After over 18 months as a very happy iPhone 3G user I decided it was time to make the switch to Android with the wonderful HTC Desire. As a long term Linux user Android would seem to be my natural place and with the Desire the hardware seems to have pretty much caught up with the Apple world so there was no excuse. Having this great new phone without running the latest and greatest release of Android seemed silly though and not wanting to wait for HTC and O2 to pull their fingers out and release an official update the only answer was to root it and install an unofficial ROM. I was pleasantly surprised how easy this was.

So here is a guide to how I installed Android 2.2 with HTC Sense on my HTC Desire using unrevoked3 and AdamG’s “Official” Froyo HTC Sense ROM (version 1.0c).

Obviously I take no responsibility if you follow this and anything goes wrong but it worked for me on my Desire with HBOOT 80. Rooting using the new unrevoked3 is a breeze and a Goldcard is NOT required and as long as you are careful to make a Nandroid backup of your original setup before flashing a replacement ROM then you can’t really go wrong.

Note that by doing this you will void any warranty you may have.

Requirements:
Linux PC (Ubuntu 10.04 in my case)
HTC Desire
USB Cable
Titanium Backup from the Android Market
Unrevoked3 from here (16.1 MB)
Updated Radio ROM from here (11.3 MB)
Froyo Sense ROM from here (134.4 MB)
About 30 minutes

STEP 1: Rooting

First of all on the Desire go to:
Settings -> Connect to PC and set the default connection type to “Disk drive” and untick “Ask Me”
then
Settings -> Applications -> Development and tick “USB Debugging” and “stay awake when charging”
and finally in
Settings -> Applications tick “Unknown Sources”

Connect the Desire to your PC using the USB cable.

Open a terminal on the PC and do:
wget http://downloads.unrevoked.com/recovery/3.1/reflash.tar.gz
tar zxvf reflash.tar.gz
sudo ./reflash

Wait a few minutes while unrevoked3 does its thing.

When it has finished the Desire should then reboot into recovery mode and unrevoked will say “Done!”, reboot the phone by clicking the trackpad.

That’s the root done. Yes, it’s that easy!

STEP 2: Backup existing apps & settings

Disconnect the Desire from your PC.
Download Titanium Backup from the Android Market.
Run it and dismiss the message saying it can’t get root privileges.
Click “Problems?” at the top and then “Yes, do it”.
Back everything up with Menu -> Batch -> Backup all user apps + system data

STEP 3: Install new Froyo ROM

You need the 5.x radio ROM
and the Froyo ROM

Do NOT unzip these files, just copy them to the root of your MicroSD card.

Turn the Desire off.
Turn it back on by holding the power button and the volume down button.
Scroll to Recovery using the volume buttons and select it with the power button.
Scroll using the volume buttons and press the trackpad to select Nandroid and then backup. <- IMPORTANT! This gives you something to fall back on should it all go wrong.
After the backup process has finished select install zip from sdcard then choose zip from sdcard and select the radio ROM (32.42.00.32U_5.09.00.08.zip).
Let this complete and then select install zip from sdcard again followed by choose zip from sdcard and select the Froyo ROM (sensefroyo_v1.0c.zip)
When this has completed use the back button to go back to the first recovery screen and select wipe data/factory reset.
Reboot when the wipe/factory reset has completed.

Your Desire should now reboot into Android 2.2 with HTC Sense.

STEP 4: Restore your old apps & settings

Download Titanium Backup from the Android Market again
Run it and click “Problems?” at the top and then “Yes, do it”.
Restore your old apps and settings with Menu > Batch > Restore missing apps + all system data

STEP 5: Enjoy

Enjoy the speed improvements and extra features offered by Android 2.2 such as 720p HD video recording and being able to use your phone as a WiFi Hotspot.

Update 4/8/10: An optional step you may want to do, setting up A2SD

One thing I neglected to do initially was set up A2SD which is a hack to allow apps to be stored on the SD card. My thinking was that the new facility in Froyo to copy apps to the SD card would do the job, unfortunately the built in method requires that each app is coded to allow this and as I found out very few are at the moment. I soon ran out of space.

A2SD is already installed in the ROM I’ve used above. To get it working all you need to do is create an ext partition on your SD card, this is where your apps will be stored. Doing this will wipe your SD card so if you already have data on it back it up first, just connect your Desire to your PC and copy the contents of the SD card to a directory on your PC.

I used ROM Manager from the Android Market to partition the card. Select the option to partition and set swap size to 0 and choose the size of the ext partition you want, I chose 512Mb which seems plenty and I’ve seen it advised that you don’t use more than 1.5Gb as it can cause problems. The remaining space on your SD card can be used for data etc. just as before.

Reboot the phone and A2SD will automatically copy your existing apps to the SD card and any apps you install in future will be stored on the SD card. You can copy your original data back from your pc to the remaining space now as well.

Doing this has meant I’ve gone from under 15Mb free on the phone storage to 120Mb.