TomTheGeek

All the geeky stuff that gets me hot.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Vista's got nothing on Beryl



I just installed the beta release of Ubuntu and one of the things I wanted to try was Beryl. Beryl is a window manager that adds a bunch of seriously cool 3D effects to your Linux desktop. A bit pointless perhaps, but really really cool nonetheless. Vista's visual effects look stale in comparison.

The stylus sucks as an input device


I've had my HTC Wizard (AKA Cingular 8125) for a year now and I can't wait for the HTC S710 to come out in the states. I've just gotten so sick of having to pull the stylus out to do the most basic tasks with the Wizard. I don't mind if the stylus is an option but everything should be usable with just the keyboard.

The most irritating is when I want to compose a text message. I type in the name of the person then pull out the stylus just to position the cursor so I can type the message. Tab doesn't work, enter doesn't work, down arrow doesn't work, nothing. To be fair I think it's like that because of a setting I changed. When I first installed the ROM I could use the down arrow to move the cursor but then I changed something and now it doesn't work.

The other part that pisses me off is going up a directory in the WM player library. If they just had a ".." entry I could use the direction pad and highlight it then click the enter button to go up a directory. As it is I can drill down into a folder but I have to pull out the stylus in order to go back up.

The only thing I would really miss the stylus for is cutting and pasting. That feature is really handy. If they could figure out a way to do that with a Smartphone I really wouldn't see the need for a Pocket PC version of Windows Mobile at all.