Where is Google Apps free edition?
The thing is I want to move all e-mails from one of my domains to Google Apps. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t offer free edition (or standard edition), which is allowing up to 50 users only, anymore. After finding for the link for Google Apps standard edition for a while, I just found out that Google started moving Apps, GMail, docs, etc. to be paid service only.
Not like Google at all huh? I started wonder whether Google will force everyone paying for used-to-be-free service or not although Google said that it was free before.
However, in this transient state, you still are able to signup for Google Apps: standard edition by this link. It works now. I don’t know how long this link is going to last though and more importantly, how long this free Google Apps lasts. If you are using it, just backing up all your mail data more often. That should do it! =) I just hope that Google would honor free edition as they claimed when we signed up. No new features? that’s not a problem. For me, GMail engine solely is the factor here. I bet most users are the same.
Popularity: 1% [?]
TVSU revival by request!
I don’t know if you guys know about this or not, but what I first thought is ThinkVantage System Update was temporarily dropped service due to update or whatever. It’ was turned out to be Lenovo decided to cut TVSU out of ThinkVantage Suite due to the maintenance cost.
However, System Update made its way back by tons of requests. I’m really happy to see it back and it works just fine with Win7 (which I don’t have complete set of ThinkVantage software such as Fingerprint and Active Protection System) but CSS still doesn’t get along with clean install Win7. Oddly upgrading Win7 from Vista, CSS works flawlessly!
This can be either the way to waste Lenovo’s bandwidth or it’s the way to keep the crowd with Thinkpad. But the bottom line is happy customers. You are on the right track, Lenovo!
Popularity: 4% [?]
Palm PRE – Will I get it?
I still work on this question after get my dirty hand on tireless Palm Pre at local Sprint Store. Yeah! Although most of Palm powered devices don’t have any much more attention than any other device on the shelf, Palm Pre is an exception. It, honestly, doesn’t seem like a product from the company with 4 characters like PALM that used to know. Almost all people would like to have hand on such a new flashy device like Palm Pre.
View Full AlbumI won’t deny that it feels great in my hand. The rubberized texture on the back does help a lot, but I hate to say the qwerty keyboard is too small & too thin—like Centro which I couldn’t even type comfortably and correctly. When sliding the screen up, I almost lost how to control the device between keyboard and the screen. It’s like keyboard couldn’t do anything to control stuffs and screen is way too far. I wish Pre was taller, had larger screen and used only on-screen keyboard or make the keyboard like what we have on Treo! That would be much better, but with only $199, that’s tough decision! haha
On software side, webOS does give such a nice feeling. Although I hadn’t tried to get to know it much, I feel it has potential to be real successor for Palm OS day, but what I couldn’t figure out is where the zen of Palm. Ease of use? Well, let me tell you one thing, Calendar, and all PIM are only the reason why I still wait for Palm. However, when I made new event for calendar, I had no clue how to get out of that page to the day/week/month view. I have to get to main page, throw the card away and call calendar again. At least, one thing I can say is it’s not that intuitive like what I’m waiting for. Learning curve is definitely helping here, but it’s sad somehow losing all that feeling from this company. Other than not quite intuitive UI like what we have on iPhone, I don’t feel Palm Pre has the edge over iPhone much. Honestly, I don’t like iPhone much, but it still rule mobile’s world.
Time… is the factor here. This is only first time—10 mins perhaps. I might not know the OS and the phone enough to say that it’s worse than iPhone, but the smaller screen, below-par keyboard, not any notification besides screen doesn’t help Palm Pre cuts the edge over iPhone. We’ll see how 3rd generation of iPhone looks like. Then I definitely make a decision whether I will be Palm fanboy like old days or turn myself to be cool carrying iPhone.
I still wish webOS found the way to have PDA-style device on its own. I would buy it in matter of second for sure =)
Popularity: 2% [?]
Bing – re-badge Live Search
This is definitely not the breaking news. Microsoft just decided to change the word, Live, to “Bing” I don’t know if Bing is so much better word or anything. Will Live suite which is great change its name to Bing suite as well? They claimed that Bing uses new algorithm or whatever to achieve better performance; we probably don’t care either. What we care is whether “our keyword” can generate the result we want or not.
After trying for a while, I don’t see anything much interesting or persuasive enough to convince me that it’s much more than a re-brand & putting useless features like category, search history. I honestly don’t know if you feel the same way, to me, search is built to destroy any classified, categorized data since if you do arrange stuffs neatly, you don’t need search, but if you do need “search, “ then you have no need of organizing them [that includes others’ stuffs which is categorized in the different ways of your brain]
In short, if Bing couldn’t change attitude about putting more and more bots for much larger coverage, like Google, and try to get most out of those huge database, they are not going to be even close to the first choice. Don’t think Google is the only competitor here. Yahoo, which gives the results much different than Google, might be much better alternative to Google rather than old archive search like Bing.
ps. I really feel sorry for Microsoft that they have soo much potential in every ways, but they couldn’t come up with the ace solution to the market. They might need to re-organize or something to aim their goals much more efficient. For instance, if they happen to amalgamate all E-mail clients’ teams such as Windows Live Mail, Windows Mail, Outlook Express, Outlook 2007, into only 1 e-mail client—might be 2 sub-divisions: web-based & desktop-based. I believe they can have GMail-equivalent easily. But, they are dividing into small groups to achieve in everything as far as the products go. Consequently they just divide themselves… and think of it as a good plan. Hurr what a waste..
Popularity: 3% [?]
