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New Toy

On Monday I got my newest toy, a Qtek 9100 (also known as the HTC Wizard). You can check out geek.com’s review for pictures. I haven’t used to too much yet but here are a couple of annoyances:

  • No decent SSH client. WTH? Great, I have a better SSH client on my Treo, but I can’t multitask on it.
  • No decent IM client. Again WTH? I’m surprised by the state of IM clients (and SSH clients). Is everybody just using Messenger or something?
  • Could probably use more buttons on the face of the device. Could probably use a CTRL key on the keyboard.
  • Why can’t I get Bluetooth DUN working with my PowerBook?

I’ll probably follow up with some more thought later. I guess I’ll be looking into a couple things:

  1. the amount of work in porting PuTTY, because the PocketPuTTY guy never released his code, and it is barely usable.
  2. the amount of work to port libgaim (hey there is a Windows version of Gaim already, how much work can it be?) and tack a WM5 oriented UI on it
  3. the amount of work to hack SynCE to work.. oh I dunno.. iSync and WM5/ActiveSync 4. Hopefully I can avoid having to use a USB sniffer. Or syncing to Entourage syncing to Exchange and then syncing to my Wizard.

I still have my Treo 600 for development purposes.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 28th, 2005 at 6:16 pm and is filed under Computers, Toys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “New Toy”

  1. Erik Says:
    January 29th, 2006 at 2:41 pm

    Do you still have your QTek? I’ve been looking at this one, but one of my requirements is the ability to ssh from it. Have you found a solution for this yet?

    Is it possible to map a key to CTRL?

    Other than the annoyances you’ve posted, how do you feel about this phone?

    Thanks :)

  2. Tienshiao Says:
    January 30th, 2006 at 12:39 am

    PocketPutty works. It doesn’t work well, but it does work.

    For the CTRL key you can pop the virtual keyboard and tap the virtual CTRL key. Not the best solution, but again it works. I’ve also seen a program made by a Japanese guy that adds a button to the title bar that toggles CTRL/ALT, but I didn’t really like the way it worked. Another issue is the lack of an ESC key (if you’re a vi person), the virtual keyboard also lacks an ESC key.

    I’ve followed up with a little review: http://www.tienshiao.org/archives/2005/12/15/life-in-review-qtek-9100/

    Since the review, I’ve upgraded the ROM and it seems to be performing a little better (a little faster, a little more reliable). However, my A key has been acting a little sketchy lately. Aside from the A key, I’m feeling little better about it then when I wrote the review.

    But like I mentioned to a friend, I don’t feel as strongly about the Wizard as I did about my Treo 600 when I got it.

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