Well, not Austin, but they taste like a cheeseburger…
Doritos
LATE NIGHT
all nighter
CHEESEBURGER
I saw them and had to try them. I tried the all nighter Taco flavor once, but it mostly tasted like the old Taco flavored Doritos.
The funny thing is that they got the flavor pretty close. There is the flavor of beef, and cheese, and a touch of smoke and mustard. Now, I find it funny that they got close, but it is what they got it close to that I find really funny. They don’t taste anything like a good cheeseburger. They taste like the awful cheeseburgers that you buy at a cheap drive-thru in the middle of the night.
Now, some of you are probably thinking of McDonald’s, and they don’t taste anything like a McDonald’s cheeseburger. They don’t really taste like anyone’s cheeseburgers, though if I had to pick one, it would probably be Burger King, or maybe the DQ Brazier Foods like you get out west. I haven’t tasted one of those in a few years though. That touch of smoke flavor means that they don’t taste like a fried burger.
Oh, and I don’t really like them, though they do sort of hit the spot when you are looking for a snack that is more than a plain chip. They are interesting, but after a handful they start to get old. So I doubt I will buy them again….at least not for myself. They are the sort of thing that I might bring to a potluck lunch at work and see what other people think about them.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
HTC HD7
Well, I suppose I had better get started.
Here is my latest toy.
This is HTC’s latest big bad boy. It has a 4.3” screen and runs Windows Phone 7, which you will know about if you are a regular reader of this site.
One difference from the picture is that under the kickstand, mine is silver and not gold.
The HD7 is quite thin, but it makes up for it in breath and length. The back is a sort of satin grey, with a dark grey metal ring around the whole thing, or at least it looks like metal. The front is a big slab of glass, with a very tiny, recessed mesh at top and bottom that I think is the speaker grill. Also, the charge light shines out of the top mesh. The buttons on the front are capacitive (more on that later) so they are actually under that slab of glass. At the top, you have the power button, on the bottom the MicroUSB port and the headphone jack (3.5mm). On the right side you have the volume rocker and the camera button. Without being overly heavy, it has a nice heft to it that helps create the impression that this is a very solid device.
Now, about those buttons…
I have problems with both sorts of buttons. The buttons on the outer edge of the phone are very low profile and the edge slopes slightly into the front. If that doesn’t make sense, then it’s wider towards the back than it is at the front, or screen edge. I don’t know if that is the reason why, but the buttons do not provide a really positive feel. I find myself having to press them twice. Pictures don’t snap when I want them to, and it sometimes takes a couple of presses to get the phone to turn on. So, I wish that it had better physical buttons.
Unfortunately, the front capacitive buttons have the exact opposite problem. I keep finding myself on Bing because I have inadvertently pressed the search button. Now, to follow up on the capacitive search buttons, let’s move on to the capacitive screen, which I generally find very responsive, but when it comes to the keyboard…well, I have a problem. Even when used in landscape mode, getting the right keys pressed is a problem. Fortunately, the text prediction is excellent. One little problem that I run across is that if you hit space twice while you are typing, it inserts a period after the last word. Now, I actually think that is a cool feature, but I find myself with a lot of periods in the wrong places because I am not prefect at making a single tap on the spacebar. I feel sure that I will get used to that.
But, the HD7 is all about the screen. Now I have read some reviews that say the screen is not as bright and beautiful as the AMOLED screen on the Samsung Focus, but the Focus wasn’t an option for me, so who cares? Plus, this is a review of the HD7. The screen is enormous, and videos look great. I cannot compare it to anything except the Samsung Taylor that I had for a week, and this is much better.
The sound out of the little tiny speakers on the HD7 are just as bad as you would expect, but the sound from the headphone jack is as good as I expected from my headphones (they aren’t the most expensive pieces). Zune works great on the phone and I couldn’t be happier.
Now, one oddity is that at this moment I don’t have a carrier, so I cannot discuss how well it works…as a phone. That will come, but until T-Mobile drastic reduces their prices (or someone else does) I will have a T-Mobile phone with no coverage at all. I’ll try to report back later.
Now, a couple of additional things.
The HD7 from T-Mobile comes preloaded with the Netflix app. If you already have a Netflix account, then get ready for a treat, because you will be able to stream everything from Netflix straight to your phone. Combine that with a Zune Pass, and for $30 a month you’ll be getting all the Music and Video that you can eat, right on your phone.
Final word? I like it.
Here is my latest toy.
This is HTC’s latest big bad boy. It has a 4.3” screen and runs Windows Phone 7, which you will know about if you are a regular reader of this site.
One difference from the picture is that under the kickstand, mine is silver and not gold.
The HD7 is quite thin, but it makes up for it in breath and length. The back is a sort of satin grey, with a dark grey metal ring around the whole thing, or at least it looks like metal. The front is a big slab of glass, with a very tiny, recessed mesh at top and bottom that I think is the speaker grill. Also, the charge light shines out of the top mesh. The buttons on the front are capacitive (more on that later) so they are actually under that slab of glass. At the top, you have the power button, on the bottom the MicroUSB port and the headphone jack (3.5mm). On the right side you have the volume rocker and the camera button. Without being overly heavy, it has a nice heft to it that helps create the impression that this is a very solid device.
Now, about those buttons…
I have problems with both sorts of buttons. The buttons on the outer edge of the phone are very low profile and the edge slopes slightly into the front. If that doesn’t make sense, then it’s wider towards the back than it is at the front, or screen edge. I don’t know if that is the reason why, but the buttons do not provide a really positive feel. I find myself having to press them twice. Pictures don’t snap when I want them to, and it sometimes takes a couple of presses to get the phone to turn on. So, I wish that it had better physical buttons.
Unfortunately, the front capacitive buttons have the exact opposite problem. I keep finding myself on Bing because I have inadvertently pressed the search button. Now, to follow up on the capacitive search buttons, let’s move on to the capacitive screen, which I generally find very responsive, but when it comes to the keyboard…well, I have a problem. Even when used in landscape mode, getting the right keys pressed is a problem. Fortunately, the text prediction is excellent. One little problem that I run across is that if you hit space twice while you are typing, it inserts a period after the last word. Now, I actually think that is a cool feature, but I find myself with a lot of periods in the wrong places because I am not prefect at making a single tap on the spacebar. I feel sure that I will get used to that.
But, the HD7 is all about the screen. Now I have read some reviews that say the screen is not as bright and beautiful as the AMOLED screen on the Samsung Focus, but the Focus wasn’t an option for me, so who cares? Plus, this is a review of the HD7. The screen is enormous, and videos look great. I cannot compare it to anything except the Samsung Taylor that I had for a week, and this is much better.
The sound out of the little tiny speakers on the HD7 are just as bad as you would expect, but the sound from the headphone jack is as good as I expected from my headphones (they aren’t the most expensive pieces). Zune works great on the phone and I couldn’t be happier.
Now, one oddity is that at this moment I don’t have a carrier, so I cannot discuss how well it works…as a phone. That will come, but until T-Mobile drastic reduces their prices (or someone else does) I will have a T-Mobile phone with no coverage at all. I’ll try to report back later.
Now, a couple of additional things.
The HD7 from T-Mobile comes preloaded with the Netflix app. If you already have a Netflix account, then get ready for a treat, because you will be able to stream everything from Netflix straight to your phone. Combine that with a Zune Pass, and for $30 a month you’ll be getting all the Music and Video that you can eat, right on your phone.
Final word? I like it.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
One Week with Windows Phone…almost
Last week I posted my impressions of Windows Phone 7 from the few hours that I got to test one at the Launch Ambassadors event. I wanted to post before I had Windows Phone7 in my hands again and I did, but only by a few hours. Now, it is a week later and I’ve had an entire week of Windows Phone7…well, almost.
I picked up the phone on Wednesday evening and shipped it back Tuesday. Hopefully, I will have the new phone by the end of the week.
The unit I had was a Samsung Taylor. You won’t see it anywhere except in pictures from those who had the pre-production phones. It’s not a bad phone, just not one I would choose.
Set up is still just amazing, but without a SIM card you have to skip putting in your Windows Live ID and go into settings and turn on WiFi. If you buy your phone from a carrier this won’t be a problem.
Within minutes I had it all set up, my hotmail account, contacts, and calendar. Because I have Facebook tied into Windows Live I started getting Facebook updates in the What’s New section of the People Hub. I did nothing. Zune and Xbox Live took about two minutes more, because they both use the Windows Live ID that I had already entered.
So far this was just like what I had experienced in Washington. Microsoft has paid a lot of attention to the setup and it shows.
The OS is fast, blazingly fast when compared to my Samsung Omnia It but that isn’t a very good test. Apps open quickly and you can maneuver through them equally quickly with one notable exception, the Marketplace. It seems to take awhile for things to react and sometimes you find yourself staring at a blank screen with a single word at the top.
Everywhere else, the one word that best describes Windows Phone 7 is flowing. The animations help a lot with this impression you seem to flow from the home screen to the app list. You click on an app and the app list flows out of the way and the app flows into view. You flow from screen to screen. It’s really quite amazing.
Now, there were a few hiccups. I already mentioned the marketplace. Lots of reviewers have mentioned that it took a long time to open games in Xbox Live. I only noticed that a little but I didn’t download any really complex games.
I found the back button to be annoying sometimes. I am used to closing apps and there just isn’t any way to do that. I found that a bit annoying and in my scant week with Windows I was just barely getting used to it. One problem is that it is rather difficult to jump between two apps. If you open an app, then you go back through the home screen to the app list, then open another app, you can use the back button to move back to the first, but there may be several steps in between, and without a forward button there is no easy way to get back.
Windows Phone needs a task switcher. Personally, I think it should be a bigger priority than Copy and Paste.
Now, you’ll notice that I haven’t mention many of the missing parts of Windows Phone 7 as outlined by a few dozen reviewers. That’s because, with the exception of a task switcher, I didn’t notice them. Well, okay that isn’t completely true, I did notice the absence of Copy and Paste, but only because Word in Windows Phone 7 does not work exactly like Word in Windows Mobile 6.5. It’s a long story…or at least it was long on my end.
So, my final word for now is that Windows Phone 7 is great. It has at least a few things that I hope Microsoft will correct in the early updates, but it is a strong competitor for Android and the iPhone.
I picked up the phone on Wednesday evening and shipped it back Tuesday. Hopefully, I will have the new phone by the end of the week.
The unit I had was a Samsung Taylor. You won’t see it anywhere except in pictures from those who had the pre-production phones. It’s not a bad phone, just not one I would choose.
Set up is still just amazing, but without a SIM card you have to skip putting in your Windows Live ID and go into settings and turn on WiFi. If you buy your phone from a carrier this won’t be a problem.
Within minutes I had it all set up, my hotmail account, contacts, and calendar. Because I have Facebook tied into Windows Live I started getting Facebook updates in the What’s New section of the People Hub. I did nothing. Zune and Xbox Live took about two minutes more, because they both use the Windows Live ID that I had already entered.
So far this was just like what I had experienced in Washington. Microsoft has paid a lot of attention to the setup and it shows.
The OS is fast, blazingly fast when compared to my Samsung Omnia It but that isn’t a very good test. Apps open quickly and you can maneuver through them equally quickly with one notable exception, the Marketplace. It seems to take awhile for things to react and sometimes you find yourself staring at a blank screen with a single word at the top.
Everywhere else, the one word that best describes Windows Phone 7 is flowing. The animations help a lot with this impression you seem to flow from the home screen to the app list. You click on an app and the app list flows out of the way and the app flows into view. You flow from screen to screen. It’s really quite amazing.
Now, there were a few hiccups. I already mentioned the marketplace. Lots of reviewers have mentioned that it took a long time to open games in Xbox Live. I only noticed that a little but I didn’t download any really complex games.
I found the back button to be annoying sometimes. I am used to closing apps and there just isn’t any way to do that. I found that a bit annoying and in my scant week with Windows I was just barely getting used to it. One problem is that it is rather difficult to jump between two apps. If you open an app, then you go back through the home screen to the app list, then open another app, you can use the back button to move back to the first, but there may be several steps in between, and without a forward button there is no easy way to get back.
Windows Phone needs a task switcher. Personally, I think it should be a bigger priority than Copy and Paste.
Now, you’ll notice that I haven’t mention many of the missing parts of Windows Phone 7 as outlined by a few dozen reviewers. That’s because, with the exception of a task switcher, I didn’t notice them. Well, okay that isn’t completely true, I did notice the absence of Copy and Paste, but only because Word in Windows Phone 7 does not work exactly like Word in Windows Mobile 6.5. It’s a long story…or at least it was long on my end.
So, my final word for now is that Windows Phone 7 is great. It has at least a few things that I hope Microsoft will correct in the early updates, but it is a strong competitor for Android and the iPhone.
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