On 10/2/07, Jac Kersing <j.kersing at the-box.com> wrote: > On Tue, 2 Oct 2007, Michael Wiktowy wrote: > > > Reality is that they are much closer to the resource constrains of a > > cell phone and I don't know of a single cell phone that doesn't just > > wipe everything that isn't on the SIM or external memory card on a > > firmware update ... > > Sorry, not true. All (recent) S60 devices are firmware upgradable, backup > before, flash new firmware, restore and all applications are available. > (Somehow they forget to save/restore the bluetooth pairing information, > but everything works just fine) I can assure you that it is true that I didn't know of a single cell phone of this type before ;] Now I do ... can you install third-party apps on it and it restores all those too or does it just restore the built-in apps like the tablets do currently? > > All that being said, I am not sure how many apps you have but reloading > > my IT after a firmware update has never taken me 2-4 hours. > > Having to reinstall is a pain. Enabling blue pill mode for some packages. > Resetting the root password after install of sshd. It is not cool to have > to do every OS upgrade. Don't get me wrong. I do agree that this needs to be fixed. In fact, I complained to Nokia pretty soon after the very first firmware update of my 770 after buying it right after coming out nearly two years ago now. My points were that: 1) Nokia has heard these complaints and have committed to acting on them. As far as I know, they have not guaranteed this will come with Chinook. It is a much harder problem than it seems involving a lot of infructructure and the cooperation of third party repos. 2) Nokia allowing massive customizability and then yelling at them for not accomodating people who tweak them to the max is not productive. The easy avenue for Nokia is to just not allow third party apps like Apple does with the iPhone. The comparison with the iPhone was just on the basis of similar hardware (CPU speed, memory, etc.) not a comparison of functionality. The apps that come with the firmware reinstall quite nicely with next to zero time for reconfiguration. However, I think that everyone would agree that this option would suck. 3) I suggested ways that would make these 2 hour+ reinstallations/reconfigurations shorter next time. I can see situations where people digging into config files and making custom tweaks and setting up the tablet to have the same private key for sshd it had the last time would take them a long time to redo. However, if people are talented enough to dig around in and edit the config using the command line, they are surely talented enough to add all those config tweaks into a script that they can save and run in a few seonds after reinstalling exactly two apps ... xterm and becomeroot. But reinstalling a few more apps? If you keep the the .install and .deb files around it doesn't take long. What app for the tablet takes so long to reconfigure once it is installed? If it takes so long to get set up right or work around problems, it is probably a problem with the app that needs to be reported to the creator of it. Most Linux apps pick good defaults right out of the box. I am sometimes frustrated at the pace of development too but helping with development is probably more effective than beating up Nokia. Even non-coders can help by filing bug reports and offering technical support to new users. /Mike
