Gah! I rang up yesterday and CPWH sorted it out immediately. Got a text an hour later saying it had been despatched and was given a tracking number. Parents were home all day waiting for package but had to run off quickly for an errand, to return in ten minutes. Five minutes after they left, apparently [LIFTED]/citylink had tried to deliver.

The website shows a card was left behind. But there was no card at home or in the postbox.

What the hell?!?!?

Any idea if I can collect an item without a card?

Yeah, Sh***y link have done that to me before with a graphics card or two, you just take a form of ID and proof of address along to the depot, preferably with a note of the tracking number and they'll find it for you. If it is the first day they have tried to deliver it, it may be worth calling them first so that they don't put it straight into the pile for tomorrow's deliveries.

Lol managed to get the package with the tracking number on a bit of paper. It just hit me that it's a brilliant site for fraud - mug someone and you get two forms of ID and a free package!

Anyway just downloading itunes again.

Hmmm.....

Initial impressions were very good. Slick interface. Easy to figure out what does what etc. Had a bit of a play with some things but definitely have some issues:

- some things just aren't straightforward. Tried to transfer contact numbers from my old sim to the new phone. Took me about an hour to figure out and do. Tried various things like putting O2 sim in old phone, putting T-mob sim in new phone. Given both phones were locked, this didn't work. Eventually managed to figure out (via Google) that I need to sync my K800i with outlook express and then get itunes to sync outlook to iphone. Not very easy to do, given that apple have crippled the iphone's bluetooth capabilities.

- non-camera pics. I created some folders with some pics in (not 'My Pictures'), sync'd via itunes to the iphone. But now I can't delete some or all of them. A right royal PITA. Any way around this?

- sensitivity issues. This goes for the accelerometer and the touch screen. Both don't always respond to my gentle touch.

- battery. Put simply, the more I use the iphone, the more the battery goes down. What astounds me is the rate at which it goes down. I've gone from 100% right down to 30% in one day. If I hadn't controlled myself, I could easily lose all power. Will have to look into battery-saving settings. In the mean time, Is there a way to quickly turn on and off the wireless without having to trawl through settings?

- Any recommended websites to get the most out of the iphone?

Yeah, playing games is a real battery drain.

Make sure you switch off 3G, Wi-Fi and BlueTooth if you don't actually need them. I use it mainly as a "professional" 'phone, so don't tend to play games much.

I listen to audio in the car - the built in speakers aren't too bad, I can listen to podcasts whilst driving at motorway speeds, with it in my breast pocket - telephone and manage appointments etc. Plus push mail from MobileMe and MS Exchange Server.

I love MobileMe, I have a 3 Windows PCs, an iMac, iPhone, iPod Touch and an htc Touch Pro. The Touch Pro can't use MobileMe, but the rest can. That means changes made on any one device (other than htc) are pretty much instantly synched between all my devices (and with the htc next time I synch it with my desktop - the iPod when it comes in range of a wireless point). They also have an app for iDisk, which allows you to access the 10GB of files you can have in the cloud.

I synch mine with my iMac, so it synchs the photos from iPhoto, which means I can select which albums I want to include. If you go to the "Photos" tab in iTunes, can you select which folders to synchronise? I can select which albums I want to synch, or everything or nothing...

When I remove an album from the list, it and its photos are removed from the list. It could be down to the folder hierarchy... In which case, try selecting the folders you want to synchronise individually.

The synching of contacts, I'd already been through that! O2 allowed me to put all of my old contacts on my account on their website, but my Windows Mobile 'phone couldn't download the data! It was "too" smart! I ended up putting everything into Outlook, which I then synched with MobileMe, so it appeared automatically, once I set up my iPhone.

Apps I've found good are:
"Bump" - (free) allows you to bump 'phones with another iPhone and they will automatically transfer your contact details (you decide which information can be passed across).

"Around Me" - (free) lists important services around you (either type in your location or allow it to use the geolocation module in the iPhone.

"Tweetdeck" - (free) A great little Twitter client.

"MobileMe iDisk" - (free) allows you to access the files in your cloud.

"Skype" - (free) Allows the use of Skype on the iPhone...

"Stanza" - (free) Book reader, with thousands of free books.

"TWiT" - (free) streams the current audio from the TWiT network, I'm a big fan of the network, they do some excellent webcasts.

"XE Currency" - (free) calculate currency changes - useful for me, having accounts in the UK and Germany and also working in an international company's finance department, I always have the latest figures to hand.

"Remote" - (free) Apple's remote utility for controlling iTunes via your iPhone / iPod.

"Air Mouse Pro" - (on sale €2.39) Allows you to control a PC or Mac remotely, acts as media key, track pad, or using the motion sensors, you can wave it around as well. Useful for freaking people out and for meetings, media centres etc. It comes with different templates for different apps (for example it has media controls for WMP, iTunes, VLC etc. it also provides a keyboard for typing and Fn keys etc. It does need a free client to be installed on the host PC or Mac.

"GloBall" - (€0.79, I think) Excellent game, but drains the battery quickly! Played it Friday lunch time and it chewed through about 2/3 of my iPod's battery!

"Paper Toss" - (free for basic, or buy World Tour) simply throw paper in a waste basket. Surprisingly addictive.

So did I, the SIM card thing was a case in point.



Did you not have your contacts on your PC anyway? How had you got them backed up?

For me this was the easiest part of the set up. I plugged it into the Mac and bingo all my contacts including Email addresses were all carried over from the Macs address book.



Again the syncing of photographs with iPhoto was seamless. Not sure what applications the iPhone is expecting to integrate with on the PC side.


Remember it is a capacitive screen. A very very slightly moist finger finger is perfect, it won't work at all with a non capacitive object such as a finger nail. In theory you don't even have to touch the screen if the change in the capacitive field is strong enough.



There is no simple way at the moment of getting at every power saving trick without the trawl, that is to say on an iphone that is not jailbroken their isn't. I am hoping for this in the next OS update. As it is I get a good days worth out of a battery, games are a problem though, an hour or two of gaming sees the battery seriously hammered. Perhaps this is not totally unexpected though.




I hear the folk at X404 are pretty cool.




Two Apps I like are WiFi Trak for detecting WiFi hot spots and Locly for finding out about what is near to you.

CC

Bluetooth is already off given it doesn't do anything useful. Something I didn't realise was that 3G was already deactivated. Wifi I need but only at home, more for midnight surfing. Today I went from 100% to 10% in six hours, solely on game-playing.


The issue isn't syncing, it's about not being able to do anything with the sync'd albums or photos. Let's say I sync 'My Pictures' and 'My Girlie Pics'. Both will get downloaded onto the iphone but I cannot delete the folders or the individual pics once I've disconnected the iphone. To do anything to them, I have to reconnect to itunes and remove/delete using that. Compare this to photos taken using the iphone's camera which can be deleted.


Thanks for the help.


No. They were backed up using Sony Ericsson's software but on a flash drive I couldn't find.


Yes but I find sometimes despite jabbing the screen it won't always register my presses.


Yeah but ideally I'd like a site that had some more detailed info and wasn't run by a bunch of apple fanboys who practise onanism whilst looking at pics of Steve Jobs on their iphones.

That seems strange. My screen seems almost too responsive.

Remember that it is not sensitive to touch, it is sensitive to capacitance. Harder tapping makes no difference. It will respond to skin but not a nail for example.

That is the thing with the albums, they are treated the same as the music lists, to keep the control interface simple, you control what goes onto the iPhone, before it goes onto the iPhone, not after...

Although, interestingly, you can delete podcasts, just not music...

This entire proprietary stuff is really starting to annoy me. I do love the phone, the way it feels, the way it handles, the slickness of the interface, the ease of typing, the cool features, the apps, the support. This is what made me go for the iPhone.

But at the same time there are things annoying me, like proprietary software (I accepted I was gonna need iTunes but didn't appreciate how much I would rely on it), proprietary formats, inability to use non-Apple-approved apps, pointless Bluetooth etc. This is what makes me wonder whether I should have gone for a windows based mobile.

And people complain about iTunes... I had to use that in work with a directors mobile. Turn the air blue? I could've done the air, the walls, the carpet, the ceiling, the pavements...

And that was the same with all my Nokias, I needed the Nokia Communication Suite to copy my contact to/from the 'phone...

Motorola used to have their own proprietary software, my last Samsung couldn't communicate at all, to think about it...

Where is the difference, whether it is Communicator Suite or iTunes? They both do the same job.


Which proprietary format? I entered all of my contacts in MS Outlook, all of my images are JPG and all of my music is MP3...

Windows Mobile uses a similar sort of SynchCenter, which does pretty much what iTunes does for transferring information back and forth. It will also offer to move music to/from Windows Media Player and Windows Photo Gallery (although you can do it manually as well).