Pre Reviews Begin to Trickle In

The Palm Pre is coming out soon and the big gadget websites are getting their reviews in:

Boy Genius Report loves webOS but feels that the keyboard is too small and that the Pre itself feels cheap and plasticky.
Gizmodo has a similar opinion.
Engadget puts up a huge three part review. They really loved the Pre but complained about glitches with Synergy and feel that Facebook integration fills your Pre with worthless contacts.

Update I: Boing Boing Gadgets has a much more complete roundup of Pre reviews.

Update II: Businessweek has one of the more negative reviews and it points out that MotionApps Classic application which allows the Pre to run PalmOS applications only has a seven day trial. This is disappointing as it becomes one more thing that users moving from older Palm devices will have to buy in order to upgrade to the Pre.

Update III: Associated Press has a fairly positive review with an interesting look the bugs which sap the Pre's battery life:

When I first got the Pre, I was dismayed by its battery life. I got less than 24 hours of light use out of it, and it would lose nearly a third of its charge if left inactive overnight. It turns out there's a bug that drains the battery if your Google instant-messaging account is connected to your AOL Instant Messenger account. Palm says it will fix that. When I logged Google out of AIM, I got much longer life.

I extended battery life even further by setting the Pre to receive my personal e-mail instantly rather than checking every 15 minutes. That's counterintuitive — usually getting the e-mail automatically "pushed" to a device consumes more power.

I ended up with nearly two days of battery life, which I think is acceptable for a hardworking smart phone. But it would be great if Palm made it easier to manage power consumption.

Update IV: Palminfocenter, one of the oldest and biggest Palm enthusiast websites, posts their exhaustive review of the Palm Pre.

I Can Sync My Phone to iTunes? Who Knew?

Lifehacker and Boy Genius Report both point out that the Palm Pre's claimed ability to sync with iTunes is not unique. Apparently there are utilities for both the Mac and PC which allow any phone to sync with iTunes. That's certainly news to me—good news, but news nonetheless.

Firefox Speed Tweaks

I've always been skeptical of tips for speeding up your software. So when The Boy Genius Report put out this set of set of tips for speeding up Firefox, I wasn't expecting much. Still I did try them and was pleasantly surprised to see that Firefox did perform a little better on my two laptops. As with all such tips, they require you to mess with files that are best left alone, in this case, Firefox's about:config settings. Anyway, the tips worked for me and if you know what you're doing, they are worth trying.