“One of the innovations by Quickoffice in the last year or so has been to implement Quickmanager, a way of updating and upgrading the software over the air using your smartphone’s data connection. This works pretty well and in the last couple of months, v4.0 has been quietly made available and rolled out to users as a ‘pay for’ upgrade. So a user would have the choice to upgrade to:1) the editing version of Quickoffice 32) the read only version of Quickoffice 43) the full editing version of v4In my case, I upgraded the read-only Quickoffice 3 on my N93 to the full version of Quickoffice 4 – conveniently, payment can be via ‘reverse SMS’, so you don’t have to get your credit card out. You hit ‘Buy’, wait for the beep of the premium SMS being sent and acknowledged, and then bam!, you have the functionality you want. Pretty cool. If your smartphone’s firmware isn’t very recent, your copy of Quickoffice may not have Quickmanager, in which case see the Quickoffice web site to work out which option to download/buy.Version 4 is something of a major update and, ostensibly, a complete rewrite of the core code. Features like the fabulous dynamic zoom, where you can quickly scroll through a wide range of zoom levels (pressing ‘Accept’ when you get to one you like) and the much faster document opening point to a lot of low level work being done by the development team.” Read this review here:
ASUS A686/696: new communicators with GPS
“ASUSTeK Computer has announced the release of its new handheld computer A696, which was exhibited at CES 2007. At the same time there has been introduced its version – the A686. The models differ in CPU and memory size.The PDAs are equipped with GPS-modules for navigation functionality. The antenna isn’t flipping, but internal. The devices attract attention with their slimness – 15.7 mm. The shell is made of stainless steel. Speakers are on the front panel.Other specs are quite common for handhelds. The display features a 3.5” diagonal and QVGA (240×320 pixel) resolution. The GPS module is based on SiRF Star III chipset. As for wireless opportunities, there is the support of Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g) and Bluetooth 2.0 EDR. The devices are powered by Windows Mobile 5.0.The specs of ASUS A686/696: 3.5” touchscreen display, QVGA (240×320 pixels) CPU – Intel XScale 312 MHz (A686) or Intel XScale 416 MHz (A696) 64 MB RAM SDRAM 128 MB (A686) or 256 MB (A696) flash ROM GPS-module on SiRF Star III Microphone and speakers Removable battery 1200 mAh Dimensions – 11.7×70.8×15.7 mm Weight – 165 g” via mobile-review.com