Stefan’s blog

iPhone is fancy, it has great web browsing capabilities almost as good as on your desktop, but… No SKYPE, and you CAN NOT use it as a modem to connect your laptop to the Internet. That is a big failure.

I just moved to a new house in Nottingham and unfortunately I end up without the Internet connection and with no phone line. I began to look for quick, cheap and easy broadband solution and found Skypephone S2. This is a great phone, it keeps amazing me. It has HSDPA, so access to the Internet is really fast. I have got 300 Kbps download speed. It is good enough to watch YouTube videos. The 3G speed and the fact that you are getting it through your mobile phone is really amazing. Especially when I remember those old days of dial-up modems.

Skypephone has got three things out of 4, which I use the internet for. That is email, Skype and internet connection itself which is possible to share with laptop or other device over bluetooth or cable. Skypephone has got web browser itself, but it is poor compared to the iPhone one. However it is good enough to check your email, or browse your RSS feeds or get the latest news. I will not count the built in web browser however it is usable for 50%. 3 out of 4 features than. iPhone on the other hand got just 2 things out of 4 things I use and that is just solid web browser directly in the phone and email. You can not use the phone to connect your laptop to the Internet unless you hack it and there is no Skype.

I am very happy with the new Skype phone. I got features which I need, mobile internet, ability to connect my laptop, skype and email on the go for just €60 one time payment. With the iPhone (around €500) you can’t get this, you will get just decent mobile web browser. No free Skype calls, no fast Internet for your laptop. Apple should do this right, at least enable full potential of 3G inside the iPhone, should make it possible to share the connection with the laptop and enable VoIP services like Skype to use the iPhone. When these things will be done iPhone will be very good device, till than I stick with my cheap Skype phone.

PS: I had a bit of trouble to make Skype phone work under Mac OS X Tiger. So here is a quick note for people using it on Macintosh. Forget about System Preferences : Networking. I set it up over System Preferences : Bluetooth and run wizzard for setting up Bluetooth device where you can choose it to act as a modem for the Internet connection. Turn off wait for dial tone option.

It was made in 2001. Now is 2008 but still it is in use by many. Around 30% of all the people visiting my sites use IE6. It is crappy, it lacks proper support for web site standards and it is hard to make all the latest web sites compatible with this old crappy browser. From now on, I end up support for Internet Explorer 6. This means that all the new web sites developed, and existing Clever Leap services updated, will no longer be tested for Internet Explorer 6. This will enable us to keep focused on quality of the service rather than solving compatibility issues for 7 years old browser used by people who slept.

The time has come and it is good to update all that old browsers. I understand however that it is hard to get Internet Explorer 7 on old machines running windows 98. But there are even better and more secure alternatives like Firefox and Opera which run on windows 98. Opera is excellent browser for the old machine and still supports latest web standards. So there is no excuse why not to upgrade to the latest browser or different one.

Good bye Internet Explorer 6, you were pain in the ass for about two years. Now we are going to develop even better web sites and application worth the year 2008.