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Thanks to both Naldo and DZ for your advice. I'm going to pick up my phone after work today, so getting really exited now! Won't have time to play around too much with installing a different ROM for the next week, but I hope I'll get there in not too long :-)

[strike]I also ordered myself one of those "Barely There" cases, looking good.[/strike] No, I did not. For some messed up reason, Amazon won't ship that item to Norway :angry:

Today I finally had it with my old HTC Hero and ordered the Galaxy S2. Going away for the weekend, so really hoping it'll be in place by Monday :woot2:

I've rooted my Hero and installed custom ROMs almost since the beginning, as a bare necessity to get some half-decent performance out of it. With the S2 however, I assume it will work like a charm out of the box. I do consider rooting it (mainly to get full use of Titanium Backup), but keeping t the default OS.

But I have thought about installing a custom ROM straight away (I see the guys over at VillainROM have one going, and I've been very happy with what they have done for my Hero). Do some of you that have used the phone got any advice? Are there any particular custom ROMs you have tried and would like to recommend?

And one more thing btw: have any of you found a nice cover/casing for use with the S2 (kinda like those you see for the iphone 4)?

Really? I got loads that are incompatible:sad:
Hyperwords and video downloader are the ones I'm disappointed to lose though

For incompatible add-ons, I can recommend the Add-on Compatibility Reporter add-on by Mozilla. It allows you to enable add-ons that appear to be incompatible. The truth is that many of them will actually work, and the add-on has a feature where you can report if the add-on is broken (or if it works), so that the developer can adjust the version requirements, or take necessary steps to fix the add-on.

Sorry - missed it - hope you had a good 'un !

I almost missed it myself (about a month ago now, isn't it :narnar:), so I can hardly blame any of you folks! Thanks all though :-)
 

Happy birthday Threb, put yourself about and show yourself about here more!  LAN is coming soon too!

Another LAN would be fun at some point (at least for the beer and food, since I don't do much gaming any more). I always keep an eye out for the dates when they come, but I don't think it'll be the next one at least. But I hear rumours about Elly and Oth wanting to go as well some time, so maybe I'll join them if that happens :-)

One trick I know of is to stay outside and train in mate,  there are some quite reasonable hotels outside of it and the trains are pretty good.  Check out TripAdvisor

Good tip. Didn't know about TripAdvisor either, looks like a useful site!
 

Bring rainproofs and warm clothing as it's August

You know, I'm from the cold and windy coast of Norway, so a bit of rough late Summer/early Autumn weather I can handle any day ;-)

You should go see that underground city thing. Don't know the namn right now..... I'll be back

Ooo, sounds cool!

Hi folks

I'm considering going to he military tattoo in Edinburgh together with the gf in the start of August. We're planning to stay a couple of days more than for the show, so we're looking for both a reasonable place to stay and some things to do for the extra days.

Most of the major hotels seem to cost quite a bit, so I was wondering if anybody had any good recommendations for a reasonably-prices place to stay. Doesn't necessarily have to be in Edinburgh either, as long as it's not too far away.

And question two: when we're first there, are there anything in particular we should try to see/visit/experience, either in or around Edinburgh, or somewhere else (not too far away) in Scotland?

Any recommendations and advice would be much appreciated :-)

Thanks for sharing your experiences folks!

I'm still on my HTV Hero, and even though it's rooted, running 2.2 and has given me much joy through the last two years, I'm really starting to fell the need for an upgrade. Haven't really been reading too many reviews yet, but my eyes have picked up the Galaxy S2 as a very good option.

Other then your general impression (both first and after using it for some time) of the phone, I'm also interested in how you find their UI experience (touch wiz, isn't that it?) - especially when coming from HTC Sense or stock android. And how easy is it to root it (and perhaps even install custom roms/plain vanialla android)? And I guess the battery time isn't anything more impressive than anything else these days (i.e. must charge every night)?

I too, as many others have said, feel that the size is a bit too big. I would prefer a phone with less than four inches... But perhaps as OB mentioned, he was sceptic too, but got used to it quite fast... How do the rest of you S2 owners feel about this?

@Gorion: I have some very small floor skirtings, but in the living room I've already planned to install special cable skirtings to pull cable from the pone point to the desktop computer (as well as some audio cables for my surround system). The problem with cable however is to get between the rooms (as my server probably will be placed in the hall). But those cable skirtings are a really nice invention, so that'll probably work out very good in one room at least

@T-Bag: thanks for the clarification. I've already read a bit about security with homeplugs, so I'll keep that in mind.

Cheers all, lots of good advice here

I haven't thought of homeplugs, but that might be a viable solution. The building is only from 2005, so the electric system ought to have a pretty decent standard. Regarding placement of the homeplugs, is it better if they are plugged into the same circuit, or doesn't it matter it it has to take the tour via the fuse box? If I could get 200mbps as T-Bag says, that would be great, but if I end up with something like what ArithonUK describes, that wouldn't be worth it...

Flat cat6 cables might also be a good option. Naturally it would be the best solution if I could get a full-wired gigabit network between all my major devices, so I'll definitely have to look into this.

And if I end up with the full wireless solution, I'll probably go for something with dual band support to minimize interference problems from neighbours etc.


Thanks again, and please add more input and advice if you have some to offer

Hi chaps and chapsesses. I'm just popping by for some quick technology advice
(I tried doing a quick search here on the forum, but if I missed something obvious please just point me in the right direction)

I've just recently bought my very first own apartment, and tomorrow I start the moving process. The most important thing to have a good plan for is (obviously ) the network infrastructure. I have the following scenario:

• Internet enters my apartment in one corner of the living room.
• My desktop computer will be placed in the opposite corner of the living room. I'll probably be able to pull a cable between it and the Internet access point
• My home server (HP MediaSmart) will be placed in a cabinet in the hall. I don't have the option of pulling a cable to it, and it doesn't have a wireless interface.
• Various portable devices (phone, laptop etc) will be connected with wifi
• There are also lots of other apartments around, so I would guess that'll also mean many other wireless networks as well (but all apartments are separated by concrete - both walls and floor/roof).

My initial idea to set this up is something like this:

• One wireless router (with some LAN ports) placed at the point where I have the Internet plug in my living room, one cable between this router and my desktop
• Another wireless router in the hall connected physically to my home server, and configured as an access point (is that the proper terminology?) towards the wireless router in the living room

And I have the following requirements:

• All of my media is stored on the home server, so I must be able to stream high quality video (1080p (at least when I get myself a new TV :narnar:)) from it to the desktop (wireless between the two routers, and through cable from the last router to  the desktop)
• I have amongst other things some torrents running on the home server. This means that the two routers (and the wireless network) must be able to cope with this kind of traffic (many simultaneous connections etc).
• Although it has been ages since I've had time to do some proper gaming (and it doesn't look too good in the foreseeable future either...), the network should by no means have any limitations here
• The router(s) must be easy to manage w.r.t. wireless security, port forwarding (perhaps QoS?) etc.

So, I guess this means as a bare minimum the two wireless routers must support 802.11n. And since the wireless network will be the bottleneck here, gigabit support on the physical ports isn't strictly necessary (but would be nice if I'll be able to connect things differently in the future). But is there any point in both the two wireless devices being routers, or would it work just as well (or perhaps even better) if the one in the hall with the media server were a dedicated access point only?

And does people have any special recommendations regarding brands of routers? Linksys > D-Link? Or are other brands better? And how much money is it worth putting into this? The Linksys E1000 Wireless-N Router is for instance a cheap alternative at only 39£, with the Linksys E2000 Dual-N Band being a bit more expensive one at 72£.

I've also come across people mentioning DD-WRT. Is it worth buying hardware where you can install this? And is it worth it to go for DD-WRT?

And an upgraded version, now 1.4.2, of Angry Birds is now out: http://us1.campaign-archive.com/?u=63b9f50404dc0d105599c267a&id=d60126ce36&e=f494be2864

Angry Birds Android now supports QVGA graphics, so owners of devices  with this compact screen size should find the game running perfectly on  their phones.
(...)
We have fixed a number of issues that a lot of people experienced with  Angry Birds on Android, including the blank screen issue on Android 1.6  devices, and the white textures appearing on certain devices.

The support for QVGA means that it now shows in Android Market for more phones. Saying that it runs perfectly on these phones however is a mild exaggeration... I have a rooted highly optimized Android 2.2 rom on my Hero, and the lag of the game was now so bad that I reverted back to my backup of Angry Birds 1.3.5. I'd rather have the white textures, than a game with so major lag that I can hardly play it.

Nice update for those with the phones that can handle it though And since this game probably never even were meant to run on a Hero, I shouldn't really complain. Suppose instead it's getting close to me needing a phone upgrade

Nice car Sheep

But you must have been tricked. Because from what I can see from the picture, the steering wheel is on the wrong side of the car... :getmecoat:

From what can be seen in the linked thread, it appears that we cannot expect any more releases of the great FroydVillain rom: http://www.villainrom.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?3288-Suggestions-for-FroydVillain If you scroll down to the 4th post, you'll see the developer, Ninpo, expressing himself in his usual way. In short, he says he's done with it.

I'm mostly happy with it the way things are now (only have an issue with Exchange draining my battery, so I cannot use it for my work e-mail) - it is a good, fast and stable rom. Still, it is exiting to get something new every now and then.

So if anyone has been testing some new and shiny roms for the HTC Hero lately, I'll be interested to hear about it

@BrotherTobious: I have Adobe Premier a try. It for sure is a very powerful program. Lots of really cool features But for my use right now, it is a bit too advanced. I understand the basics, but there are way too many options, features, stuff to click on etc. I often found myself in the situation that I had clicked some kind of short-cut key by accident, and now isn't able to click on the stuff I'd like to etc... If I had a week or two to play around with it, it would be great, but I won't have time in just a couple of days.

@T-Bag: interested to hear if you remember what it is


And btw: I've also just tried out Video Spin (from Pinnacle Studio), but I found that one to be utter crap. So for now at least, it's back to Movie Maker.

[So, questions:]

I'm going to make a small presentation of some pictures taken on a company trip. In short, it is going to be a rather simple slide show, with the pictures synchronized to the beat of a music track (using Eye of the Tiger, so this just have to be good :boxing:). My first idea was to try Windows Movie Maker. I've never used it before, but from what I've heard it's pretty simple - and it turned out to be easy as well.

My first problem was that I noticed that the latest version of Windows Movie Maker (now "Windows Live Movie Maker, version 2011"...) doesn't have the time line mode - which makes it a pain to get proper synching between the music and the pictures. Luckily, I found I could download an older version (version 6.1), which has the time line. Problem solved.

The next challenge was that I didn't find it as smooth and easy to set up the presentation the way I want. Basically, I want to create a series of time frames mapped/in synch with the music, and when I have that I would like to fill every time frame with different pictures (and be able to move pictures around without changing the duration of the time frames). The way I do it now, is that I have all the pictures in a line, and drag them to be as long/short as a small piece of the music. If I then decide that I want to move a picture, it seems that the duration follows the picture, and I will have to re-synch the whole line affected by moving that one picture.

So, questions:

• Does somebody with experience with Windows Movie maker have any tips for me to make this job a bit easier?
• Or is there perhaps some other piece of software that is better suited for this kind of task? It would (preferable) have to be free, as I only need it for this one thing (and it ought to be ready for this weekend).