Kies = poo

It was a day off today, not really as a holiday but because my Mum had a hospital appointment. I took the morning to go and see my sister, which was nice but also because the trackpad on her laptop had stopped working. I couldn't figure out why and despite me telling her to use Firefox with Adblock, it had spyware on it and toolbars and crap, so I brought it home with me to sort it out.

I finally got a new phone. I had intended to get a Galaxy S2 as the natural progression from the Galaxy S, but discovered that the Galaxy Note was about the same price. It's rather big with a 5.3" screen but it is a much higher resolution. So I've ended up with one of those. It arrived today but was on the old Gingerbread version so there was no point setting it up until it was on Ice Cream Sandwich. Unfortunately it didn't want to update over the air so I had to use the Samsung Kies application to do it. It did NOT want to cooperate on my Windows 7 machine and was reluctant to do it even on the old Precision M90 with XP. Eventually I just left it to do it's thing while I was out at badminton and when I came home it had finally worked. They are supposed to be releasing Jelly Bean for it at some point so I'll have to go through it all again at some point, arse.

It remains to be seen if the Note will be as good as the Galaxy S was. The size is...well, yes, a concern. It's big. I have a feeling that I'll be mocked when I use it, much like I was when I had the old Nokia N-gage. Despite the size, it feels OK to use and the screen is downright beautiful. The Galaxy S has been running various ROMs with normal Android since I had it so it's odd to see the Samsung Touchwiz interface again. The Note doesn't seem to have quite the same level of support in custom ROMs so I'll probably just stick with that for the time being.

My badminton racquet has returned with a new handle and strings. The handle is rather weird as the new tape is almost sticky and it feels different. The new strings are amazingly tight which meant it was difficult to control my shots and also since I've not exercised in a while after I was ill it wasn't a particularly good evening for me. Also the new strings stink, which is odd.

Friday tomorrow, thank goodness.