My 2005 Mazda3 does not have the flip-up GPS option installed so I’ve been using my phones as GPS units.  I have a mount and a really kick ass bluetooth FM transmitter that’s worked so well for me, I bought one for my mother to use in her car and she loves it.  The sound quality is excellent and the mic is very clear.  Overall I was happy with it.  The mount was good, but often fell while driving which can be fun of course, and the bluetooth unit was obtrusive at times (they have a smaller one that doesn’t have the arm, but they didn’t have that when I bought it).

I decided to start looking at stand-alone GPS units, mainly because I didn’t want to rely on cellular data for navigation.  It became a problem while driving through Pennsylvania to Pittsburgh for work, and often while I’m working in the burbs I lose cell coverage and can’t navigate.  I was looking for units with lifetime map updates and traffic with a large enough screen to see easily.  The ones I really looked at would be between $150 and $200.  I didn’t want to drop $200 on a standalone GPS that I won’t use enough to justify the cost…plus I really didn’t want to have more wires and devices hanging around the car.  So I began thinking about in-dash units…

I was doing a lot of looking online for factory units, but those require so much altering and even then my car would probably not be able to use it without changing a lot of electronics, so that was out.  I went to look at fold-out LCD 1-DIN units, and in-dash 2-DIN units, but the cost on these are so high (the best price I saw was $700 plus the dash kit!) While these dash units are good brands and would probably be very nice, I didn’t have $700+ to drop on a unit.

After visiting some forums and even looking on eBay I came across a unit from a company called Eonon. The unit I saw was $270..still a bit much, but it was an entire stereo replacement with a 7-inch screen.  I read reviews and found that users were relatively happy but some of the weird issues put me off.  I decided to let it sit for a while and just continued with my phone.

A few weeks ago I found that Eonon released a newer updated unit for the Mazda3, and a forum I frequent was having a group buy.  After reading the reviews of the new unit being FAR etter than the old unit, and almost every user was happy I decided to bite the bullet and buy one.  Of course I was very hesitant to buy from some company in Hong Kong that I never heard of with a device running Windows CE 6.0, but I took a chance..besides, it comes with a 2-year warranty.

After a few days I received the unit (really fast, from HK!) in a really nicely packaged box.  First impressions: the build quality of the unit is pretty good!  It looks like it could be a factory unit, the buttons feel pretty nice, the screen is big, the knobs are solid, it just looks petty nice!

Eonon D5151 Out of Box

Looks 9/10

The D5151 looks really good in the car, it really looks like a factory unit.  The screen is not bad, in bright light it’s definitely difficult to see, but I’ve had similar experience in a Prius so I wouldn’t fault it too much.  You can chance the boot logos, backgrounds, and the LCD colors to help customize it.  The buttons are a little flimsier than the stock stereo, so I took a point off for that.

Stock on Left, Eonon on Right

Radio (6.5/10)

The stereo is of course the base of the D5151.  The radio interface is far better than the old one, it’s easy to read and easy to use.

Radio Interface

The sound from the stereo is pretty good; however, I did find some issues with it.  When you set a preset (say I set 93.3 on #1 and 104.5 on #2) it will play whatever preset you’re on just fine.  Oddly enough, when you switch to another preset for some reason the numbers that show what station you’re on (in the center of the stereo) will stay on the first preset.  Seems to be a small software bug that hopefully can be fixed.  The radio does play whatever station you’re tuned to just fine, it just shows a different number.  It’s not as bothersome since I use my steering wheel controls and don’t look at the screen much anyway, but it’s still an odd problem.

The second issue I found with the stereo is that the tuner seems to be either really sensitive, or really crappy.  I normally get perfect signal with the stock radio, and this one gets the same quality most times, but while driving I’ve noticed the signal dipping in and out randomly.  Not sure if this is hardware related or software related..but it’s a bit annoying so hopefully that can be fixed.

Finally, after some time the radio has some random pops, not very loud and no set pattern, just random clicks or pops.  I have read online that these go away after a bit of a “burn-in” period, so hopefully that is the case.

I have contacted the company regarding all of these issues and will update with any word from them.

Bluetooth/Phone (9.5/10)

I pair my iPhone with my car automatically.  I use it as a phone and for playing music a lot.  The sound quality of the phone calls is really good.  I can hear the person clearly and apparently they hear me very clearly.  Siri even works very well through the mic!  The music streaming is also really good.  I don’t seem to notice any issues with playing music via bluetooth, I wish the screen would show music info while playing, but it just shows a music note on screen.  I can control bluetooth audio via my steering wheel, which is nice, and if a phone call comes in it just rings through the speakers and shows the caller ID on my screen no matter what I’m doing (radio, gps, etc).  It’s really a nice step up from the old bluetooth FM transmitter.  I only took a half-point off because of the lack of music info on screen..nothing major.

Navigation (Stock: 5/10 Upgrade: 9/10)

This section is probably the most important one.  The GPS software that comes with the unit is KudosGPS, and I gotta say, it sucks.  The interface is very Windows 8 looking, which isn’t a problem, but it’s very simple and doesn’t function that well.  It was quick to load, and it did a fairly good job with navigation, but when you turn your car off and turn it back on it completely forgot that you were navigating somewhere and seemed to forget my state and city everytime.  It was only a $30 add-on, but I was very underwhelmed with it.

I decided to install iGo Primo on the unit right away and the difference is amazing.  iGo is really the way to go if you’ve got a Windows CE device and you want a good looking, very nice functioning GPS system with lots of points-of-interest and updated maps. It’s a little slower to load, but it looks WAY better, had many more points-of-interest, and it allows me to add so much to it (like better voices and themes).

iGo Primo GPS

Overall

I like it.  For under $300, I have a fully functioning touchscreen GPS, in my dash with bluetooth/hands-free capability.  It looks like it’s from the factory, it sounds pretty good for the most part, the GPS (once replaced) works really well, and the installation was a breeze!  Honestly, if they fixed the radio issues and replaced the stock GPS with a better one like I did I would totally say this is a 9/10, but overall with the stock GPS I’m giving it a 7.5/10 (8.5 with the new GPS).

Would I recommend this company to others?  Probably.  I’m going to give the radio a bit to see if any of the audio issues get resolved, I’m also going to see if their customer service gets back to me about anything (I’ve read online of software patches).  I will update as things progress.

Why the fuck is this important?

Well, if you install new software (or god forbid, hardware) on Friday you have to make sure that it fucking works by the end of the day for the user.  Now, using new software might also be easy for you, so after installing and testing it you’re done, right? NOPE! Remember, the user is used to the old stuff, so they’re not going to know a damn thing about the new software you just installed for them most likely.  They’re going to call you for every little thing they need help with..EVERYTHING.  And if they can’t get something working, you’re stuck helping them.  Now, if the program install doesn’t go smoothly…you’re screwed.  You’ve gotta make sure it’s working for Monday, so guess what?  You’re staying until it’s working.

It’s worse for hardware.  If that brand new thing doesn’t work right (and you know it won’t) you’re stuck there..and if you think you’re good on Friday..wait.  You’ll get that call on Saturday that you NEED TO BE AT WORK TO FIX THAT NEW THING CAUSE IT’S NOT WORKING RIGHT!  Yeah.  It happens more often than people think.

So..Friday is really the worst time to do ANY upgrades or installs in IT.  Seriously..I just was told by a client who isn’t here (sick) to install a new version of Adobe Creative Suite on a users’ computer.  CS6 changed a whole lot from CS5.  So, like a moron, I do it.  I’ve now been called 3 times already by this person because they don’t know the new layout of CS6.  I’ve had to go across campus 2 times for this person.  I’m waiting for the phone to ring again…I just know it’s going to happen.

Why did I install new shit today?!?

Well, being client work, I have to make the client happy.  If that’s what they want, that’s what they get.  One good thing though?  If something else goes wrong after 3PM (when I’m leaving) they have to deal with it themselves.

So please, everyone.  If you work with IT people, don’t ask them to do major shit to your production environment on Fridays.  It’s a terrible fucking idea for everyone involved, especially the IT staff.  I’m not even joking when I say that if I ever have my own IT staff, I’m putting read-only Friday as a real thing, mark my words.  Friday is for planning, emergencies, and finalizing work. That’s it. Nothing else.

Now I’m going to get ready to go home and have a beer.

I few weeks after that I applied for a job working for a technology consulting company that d0es work for independent k-12 schools in the Philadelphia Metro-area.  I received a call-back the very next day and set up and interview within the next week.  Three weeks later and I had a new job waiting for me on February 27th as a Senior Support Engineer for this company (I will leave my company name private for the time being).

My new job is similar to my work at Poly but also very different.  I’m working with multiple clients, visiting different schools throughout the week and basically solving their tech issues both big and small.  It’s a lot slower-paced than I’m used to, and the levels of work can range from basic software updates and printer repair all the way up to large scale wireless and network deployment and server room build-outs.

I have clients of my own (only about 2 right now) and in 6-months time I will be managing several more locations and possibly managing more of the company as a whole (scheduling, getting new clients, purchasing for schools, etc.).  Its a very small company, just 4 full-time guys and one part-time, but there’s usually always something to do or someplace to be.

I don’t want this post to be ALL about the new job, so I’ll deviate a bit from that and mention that I did buy a car.  It’s the newest car I’ve ever owned, and I love it.  I did have to buy it because of work, but I wanted my own vehicle for some time.  Anyway, it’s a 2005 Mazda 3i Sport, it’s metallic Grey with an interesting blue pinstripe.

My new ride!

I love driving, and this car is fun to drive.  It’s one of the smaller cars I’ve owned but I don’t need to carry 5 people around anymore..all of my friends drive now!  Hopefully I’ll be able to put some customizations in it; maybe an in-dash navi/screen, but for now, it’s prefect for me.

Anyway, I will try to update more with my new job fun.  I’ll probably have to be vague about some details of work (you know… k-12 schools and all) but hopefully I can sneak some writing time in more often and maybe some different types of updates (maybe car mods/work!).

Hardware

The Mac Mini servers are very fast, quiet, and easy to store of course.  The Promise Pegasus is a great piece of hardware also.  Six SATA drives in a box smaller than a mini tower with a single cable for data.  Setting up the hardware was so simple it’s only one sentence: Take out of box, configure, plug in Promise, done.

Software

Now on to the bad part; Lion Server.  I like Lion as s desktop, I haven’t had any issues with it thus far, but I really dislike Lion Server.  Initial server setup was also very simple; it asks a few questions, configures some services for you, and you’re done.  After it drops you into the desktop, you’re on your own.  So manage the server in the past you had a few tools; Server Admin, the main config GUI for all services; Workgroup Manager, to configure users and computers on the network; and Server Monitor, a simple monitoring tool that gives you the server status at a glance.  Lion includes those tools with the addition of one more: Server.  Server is basically what separates Lion desktop from Lion Server, one single app to “control” the services.  This sounds great, but wasn’t that what Server Admin was for?  Yes..it was.  But now Apple decided that they wanted to make things more difficult and separate configurations into two programs, one of which (Server) is stupidly over simplified.

Server vs Server Admin

Server is basically a simplified version of Server Admin.  When I say simplified I mean VERY simplified.

Looks good, but wait until you go in more...

Now, compare that to the old Server Admin overview shown below.

Looks similar....but...

Now these two look like they give relatively the same information, right?  It tells you everything you need to know about the sevrer at a glance.  If you notice that on Server you have a lot more items on the sidebar though, and Server Admin has very little.  This is because Server Admin allows you to select what you want shown, so out of the many options (there are 11 total) I only need to show those 3; however, out of those 11, only 2 are available in Server also (Mail and Podcast Producer).  Why is this a problem?  Server Admin allows you to really edit lots of different settings with your services, it also allows you to edit more advanced services (DHCP, NAT, DNS).  Server allows you to edit the most used services (file sharing and web) but they are VERY limited in what you can edit.

For example, editing file sharing on anything other than 10.7 looked like this in Server Admin before:

10.5 File Sharing

This window gave you everything you needed to set up proper file sharing with users, home directories, NFS, FTP, SMB, AFP, and a bunch of other things.  It gives you great control over your network file system and user access.  This is what you get with Server:

10.7 File Sharing Configuration

That’s it.  Those are your settings you can edit. Notice the lack of FTP and NFS…as well as lack of a REAL permissions editor.  This is totally unacceptable in a server environment.  NFS is still there (it gets enabled when you use NetBoot) but where is FTP?  it’s not in Server or Server Admin.  Well, Apple decided FTP isn’t needed really, and basically removed it.  Let me rephrase, they didn’t REMOVE it completely, it’s hidden.  Apple’s basic FTP server is still there, but there are not settings in GUI for it at all, it’s all command based now, and to enable it you have to type this command in terminal.

sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist

Now, on a server, that’s pretty ridiculous, especially since FTP config was easy and clean in pervious versions of OS X Server.  To get around using the basic FTP, which has limited functionality, I decided to install a third-party server.  I will make another post on how I accomplished this and about the frustrations I had with it.  Long story short, went with PureFTP.

My frustrations with LDAP also came back.  I’m not sure if it’s an issue with our old LDAP database or setup, but I simply couldn’t restore the server LDAP backup for the life of me.  I tried several different methods but nothing worked.  I ended up exporting user data (without the passwords) to the new server using Workgroup manager.  This worked fine, but I lost every password. I was upset with this, but I knew it was the best method to try to get the LDAP working normally again (I constantly have trouble with the old LDAP server due to corruption…so this hopefully would fix that).  The user editing in Server is horrible.  It’s way too simplified, and doesn’t allow much configuration..thankfully, you can use Workgroup manager still.

After setting up a new image and setting shares for home directories and resetting passwords, I tested our lab with home directories and logins and SUCCESS!  It all worked!  So now the network accounts are faster, and the LDAP seems to be working fine now.

Moral: Lion Server sucks compared to older versions.

I’ll be updating again on how I got PureFTP installed on the server and configure it for LDAP.  I’ll also go over how I got SFTP working with users jailed to their home directories….but breaking AFP, then fixing it again.

Currently, the lab I run has 10 Mac Pro desktop’s all running into a 6 year old G5 Xserve and Apple RAID.  The RAID uses 14 IDE drives that are basically maxed out.  We have about 4TB of storage on 14 drives..this is very sad.  Our G5 servers are not upgradable anymore, and we have limitations on the types of things we can serve on them.  They have lasted us this long, but it’s time to finally phase them out.

In the next 2-3 weeks I’ll be replacing our two G5 servers and our RAID with two Mac Mini servers and the Promise Thunderbolt RAID.  The servers will give us huge boost in performance and the RAID will bump us to 12TB of storage.  This will not be an easy task as our current systems all run 10.5 and the new servers run 10.7.  I will also have to migrate all of the user accounts and data to the new system without losing anything. Instead of removing our old servers I will use them only as basic servers; MySQL, Apache, Xgrid controllers, etc.  I’m also going to use them as tertiary backups for our user accounts and servers (backing up the new machines and user accounts to the RAID once per week).

Over the next few posts I will attempt to document the migration.  I’ll start with initial setup then go to migrating data/accounts then end with the final phase out process.  I hope that the next few entries may help people who get into a similar situation as well as keep a record for myself on any problems I might face.

I image my lab once a year. This ensures that I have the latest updates for every machine for all programs, but it also cleans out the old stuff from the previous year that builds up over time.  Apple makes imaging very simple by installing a NetBoot feature on all of their machines and including a NetBoot server installed with MacOS X Server.  In the past I used Bombich NetRestore, a free AppleScript based program that helped make NetBoot image sets and helped with deploying them.  Mike Bombich stopped making NetRestore and suggested everyone to try DeployStudio for imaging..so I did.  I must say that DeployStudio is an amazing program especially for a free program.  It’s also very simple to get running and fairly robust. In this post I’m going to go over image creation, setup, and deployment with DeployStudio (DS) and also go over some issues I encountered and how I fixed them.

Creating the NetBoot Set

The first step to any Mac NetBoot is the NetBoot set.  What the set is is a basic image file that includes all the tools your computer will need to read the image, copy the image, and even run checks on your computer even if you’re not imaging.  It’s a very basic MacOS install that resides on the server.  DS creates these images for both PPC and Intel machines in the same set, so any Mac can boot from the same set.  After installing DS on your server you can open the DS control panel and begin setting up your system AND create your  NetBoot set.  I will not be going over server setup in this post, I may save that for a later time.

The DeployStudio Control Panel

When you open the control panel you should launch the assistant (you can also find it in /Applications/Utilities).  When the assistant opens you select “Create a DeployStudio NetBoot set and continue.  If you’re running the assistant on a computer other than a server you will see this:

DeployStudio DHCP Setup

If you plan on using a server to do the deploying, you can skip this, if not, you’ll have to setup a DHCP server.  This depends on your setup, for my case I can skip this.  The next step allows you to name your set; set the name and unique identifier to whatever you wish, (unless you have multiple NetBoot sets). When you click continue you will tell the set where the computer should log in and look for the images and workflows.

My settings...

more settings...

The settings above are MY settings, yours will be different.  The login and password for mine are supplied by the LDAP server.  The final step is the actual save location and creation of the image.  Pretty self explanatory. It takes about 5-10 minutes.

Completed NetBoot .nbi file

After image creating is successful you’ll have a nice .nbi file in your save location.  This file is basically an image file that contains the bootable images for PPC and Intel as well as the basic MacOS system with some basic utilities like Disk Utility, Terminal and Startup Disk.  It’s roughly 2.5 GB and it should be placed on your server in the NetBootSP0 folder (It’s located in [Volume]/Library/NetBoot/).  Inside the NetBootSP0 folder will be other folders which DS created during install, these contain various other things for DS and also house your images.  I will go over image creation next.  This is where we will be able to test to see if your NetBoot Server and set are both working.

Creating Images with DeployStudio

Creating the images is an extremely simple task once you know what settings you need.  I will explain the setup with my current settings but attempt to go over most of the other ones.

To start the process, boot your mac and hold the ‘N’ key down during power on, this will perform a network boot (REMEMBER: Your computers must all be on the same subnet, this is the only way to do this without messing with a lot of things!)  If your computer boots to the DS screen you will see the DS Runtime Window.

This window shows all of your available jobs in DS.  There are a few default jobs that come with DS, we’ll make our own later for deploying.  For now we’re gong to select “Create a master from a volume.”  Click the Play button at the top and you will come to the heart of the Image creation.

My Image Settings from a PowerPC computer

This window is probably the hardest window we’ve seen so far.  First thing is to choose which drive you will make an image of from the dropdown menu.  I’ll start with my MacOS partition.  After selecting the correct partition I name the image something like 2011_09_02_Intel_lab and leave other settings alone.  The keywords are not very important unless you have a lot of images. I usually select Compressed for the type because it saves space and it gives a much faster restoration.    Access group is what you would have set in your initial DS setup that I did not cover.

Format is what kind of image you are making.  Since I’m doing a MacOS install the Format will be HFS+.  I normally select “Auto Detect” but if you want to have HFS+ Journaled, Case-sensitive or both you may want to change it because it will always auto-detect HFS+ without journalising.

Once my settings are correct I click the Play button at the top and the image making process begins.  This will take a lot of time depending on the size of the image being created,  a 100+GB image will take roughly 2 hours (sometimes more, sometimes less, depends on the machine and network) and it will then compress the image (my images get compressed to about 75GB from 128GB…compression rocks!).

Masters in the NetBootSP0 Folder

After image creation you will see the .dmg file in your NetBootSP0/Masters/HFS folder.  (Note: I just found out that new versions of DeployStudio won’t show your images in DS Admin unless you have .hfs in filename before the .dmg, it will automatically add them during image creation, but if you have old images, just add the .hfs right before the .dmg extension).

You can use this same process to create NTFS, FAT, and EXT4 images.  Follow the same steps but make sure you leave the Format as “Auto-Detect.”  After creating a NTFS image it might take some time to show up in DS admin, this is because some server-side tasks may need to be done, it will show up when that is complete.  NTFS imaging requires a little more setup in DS admin beforehand…again, I will not be covering that in this post.

Making Workflows to Deploy Images

DeployStudio comes with an administration program where you can manage images, workflows, packages, scripts, and see progress of NetBooted computers.  You can also set up all of your computers in it before hand (names, network settings, licenses, etc) and set up automation for all of your systems so if you want a computer to automatically format and re-image when you NetBoot it, you can do that (please don’t think that’s a great idea…just saying).  To start setting up workflows you’ll need to open DS Admin, it’s located in /Applications/Utilities.  Enter your server credentials and you’re presented with the DS server information.

The window that opens first is the current (or previous) activities.  In this window you can watch and control the computers that are currently working in DS.  ou can also see what jobs they were doing, and how far along they are.  This screen is very helpful when you have DS running on many machines.

I am going to explain how to setup a dual-boot Mac workflow.  The default jobs are very helpful at getting you started, I’m going to start from scratch.  To create and edit workflows we’re going to select “Workflows” from the left sidebar and begin setting up our job.  Click the “+” button at the bottom and you will be presented with a new blank job.  Then click on the little “+” button next to “Drop tasks here.”

Creating a new workflow

The first thing to do is to drop the “Partition a disk” task from the left side to the drop space.  Then you should select  “Mac OS X + Windows” from the Apply layout template dropdown menu.  Resize the partitions to suit your needs, make sure your images will be able to fit on the partitions you make for your drive.  I normally do 75% Mac OS/25% Windows, I also normally Automate this process, your mileage my vary.

The next step is to drag the “Restore a disk image” job from the left and drop it after the partitioning job.  Your MacOS image should ALWAYS be first of else it will not work.  Select “Enter value…” from the Target volume section, then select the “MacOSX” option from the menu.  Set your Image to HFS and select the appropriate image from the menu (the one you created earlier).  Now, for the options you can read from the image below how to set those.  If you’re imaging Mac OS 10.7 Lion you should check “Restore system recovery partitions” but I don’t need this.

My HFS Settings

You may also notice Multicast settings, you can set this up if you’re brave, I don’t need it so it’s ignored.  Your HFS partition is complete, now on to Windows.

Drag the “Restore a disk image” job from the left and drop it after the first restoring task.  Select “Enter value…” from the Target volume section, then select the “WINDOWS” option from the menu.  Set your Image to NTFS and select an appropriate image from the menu again.  Settings for Windows is relatively the same as HFS with some exceptions;  you should check “Expand restored NTFS partition” and uncheck “Set as default startup volume” unless you want to have Windows as your default.  You’ll also notice that all of these tasks are automated, this is so you can boot the computer, select the job, and walk away without intervention.

DS NTFS Settings

Now, you can add more jobs to the workflow such as AD binding, or software updates, but this setup is the basic setup for a dual-boot deploy.  Now just rename the job by clicking the name in the top with the other jobs and rename it, you can also add a short description of the job.  Your workflow is now complete! Now it’s on to the easiest task…deployment!

Deployment

I say this is the easiest part because it really is.  If you have everything set up properly, you should have no issues.

To deploy the image to the computers, boot the machines again pressing the ‘N’ key, when the machine boots to DS you can select the newly created Workflow and press the play button.  If you automated everything, that’s it..it will partition your drive and load the images to those partitions.  After the job is complete your computers will either tell you it was successful (or failed…more on that below) or they will reboot.  If the task was successful, GREAT!  Reboot the machines, they will run the final scripts in MacOS then reboot again…MacOS is done.  You only have one more thing to do and that’s configure Windows.  I won’t go into this because it’s going to be different for everyone, but you will have to activate windows and any other programs that require it because Windows will not keep the activation after imaging.

Issues?

Now, not everyone will be so luck to have a successful run…if you run into any issues visit the DS forums, they are very helpful and pretty speedy.  I had one issue that just drove me nuts.  When I ran my deployment script the MacOS partition would go fine but once Windows hit it would fail…everytime.  DeployStudio keeps logs for every computer on the server, so I took a look and noticed the following errors:

[Thu Sep  1 14:41:15] dyld: unknown required load command 0×80000022
[Thu Sep  1 14:41:16] -> invalid starting block value () defined in MBR for partition /dev/disk0s3.
[Thu Sep  1 14:41:16]    Check your partition map. You need to define at least one DOS/FAT partition in order to get the MBR automatically in sync with GPT.
[Thu Sep  1 14:41:20] -> Restore action completed.
[Thu Sep  1 14:41:20] Restoration failure (elapsed time: 0.24 minutes)

I posted in the DS forums (topic link) and in a matter of hours the admin of the forums posted a solution:

Sounds like the custom fdisk command fails on 10.7 DSS netboot sets. You may try to remove the one located in your netboot folder at /Applications/Utilities/DeployStudio\ Admin.app/Contents/Frameworks/DSCore.framework/Resources/Tools/fdisk.

So I tried this and BOOM, successful.  It’s great when a developer helps with products so quickly…and I’ve only usually seen this with free or open source projects.  So if you’re having issues, the forums are key.

I hope this post helps people out with Mac imaging and deployment.  If you have any other questions or issues feel free to ask in the comments.  If this post helped you or think it will help others please feel free to repost and share away!

Let me get this out of the way first, I like this phone a lot.  It’s a great device, it’s fast, it’s sexy, it’s big..but it’s not perfect…far from it, and most of the reason is due to the crap software that is on it…let me explain.

The UI and Software

My OG ran stock vanilla Android (what devs call AOSP: Android Open Source Project). This basically means it’s the bare Android OS with no added UI tweaks and no added bloatware crap (with exception to some Verizon apps).  This is the best way to run Android for the most part because it’s not using the CPU or RAM to run some fancy/ugly user interface over top of it, it’s not going to have built-in apps syncing crap in the background, it’s just plain ol’ vanilla ice cream (and I like vanilla ice cream).  And it works!  It doesn’t waste CPU (meaning it’s faster) and it doesn’t background sync unnecessary apps constantly (meaning battery savings) unless you install them.  But of course, HTC and other companies want to change it to suit their own phones and needs.

This is a Screenshot from a Nexus 1 running AOSP 2.2

Now, the Thunderbolt (as with many HTC phones) doesn’t do AOSP Android, they use Sense UI, it’s their own user interface which they designed to put on mobile devices for a “sleek” and “unified” look.

This is Sense UI

While some people like the look (which I don’t think is terrible mind you) and the feel, I don’t like it, I hate it.  There are several reasons I hate it actually the first and most important being that it’s clunky and slow to respond VERY often; it feels like my OG before I rooted it…this shouldn’t happen on a 1Ghz phone with 700+MB or RAM.  So what I did to “fix” this was install ADW.Launcher and use that as my home app.  It’s faster, and it looks and feels more like a stock phone now.  Second, they package a whole mess of crap in with it; they have a “friendsteam” which gathers your Twitter and Facebook and whatnot into a widget on your screen and displays it and updates it for you; a weather widget (which is actually nice, but i should have a choice to remove it);  and their own Facebook and Twitter syncing built in.  This is stuff I’d like to install on my own and not have running in the background constantly asking me to log in and sync; if I want Twitter and FB, let me install them myself.  They also use their own MMS app which is very slow compared to the AOSP app.

You might be thinking, “man, this is cool that it’s all built-in, why are you hating on this?”  Because I like to be able to choose what to have installed on my device.  Because of these built in apps (which mind you, aren’t really apps, they’re more like utilities) I have two Facebook apps, and two Twitter apps and it’s kinda dumb to waste space on stuff like that.  I also find it annoying that they START UP WITH THE DEVICE…even when I DON’T USE THEM.  What a waste of CPU and battery.  Once CM7 is released for the phone (not Alpha-builds) that will be my savior.  Verizon is also guilty of bundling tons of bloatware with this device.  When I received the phone it was PACKED with tons and tons of useless crap..and you can’t remove this stuff!  I’ve written about carriers loading bloatware onto phones before, this shit needs to stop with Android.

The Battery

Smartphones are notorious for having crummy batteries.  My OG was actually pretty great before the last few months of using it.  I used to get over a day with it and I was happy.  When deciding on a new phone every review I read had the same complaint with regard to the Thunderbolt: The battery is terrible.  Now, I’m never far from a power source, and I have around 4 or 5 micro-USB chargers from my older devices and ones that I found around the lab, so this wasn’t too much of an issue for me.  My first day on the phone I got through the entire day of heavy use and texting without it dying, it got to about 5% by midnight (from 8am or so).  The second day, same thing.  On the third day that’s when it ended.  Without using it too much I made it to about 2pm before it started dying on me, I charged it and it was low again by 9pm.  Now I see what the complaints were about.  I tried using task killers to kill unwanted tasks, I synced data less, I lowered brightness, nothing helped.  I read around online and found the best way to get more mileage was to turn off 4G.  I figured, I don’t need 4G all the time, so it’s fine, if I get more battery time out of it this is what needs to be done.  After turning off 4G, I get through the day again.  A few weeks ago an update was released that helped the 4G radio consume less power, so since then I’ve actually been able to leave 4G on and get through most of my day with it…so good on them for fixing that.

The Hardware Itself

This is where the phone really does come out.  This phone has some weight to it (it’s heavier than my OG which was a brick) and it’s got that big bright screen.  The screen makes it so easy to read things on and to watch videos, the rubberized back makes it easy to hold, the weight makes it feel like you’re not going to crush it in your hands.  It is a nice, solid phone.  It’s also fast when you need it to be.  Playing games, running apps, downloading, it just runs fast (especially with ADW.Launcher).  Of course Verizon’s network helps too, I get 4G everywhere in NYC, and the 4G speeds are really good (EVEN INDOORS! Take that WiMax!).  I have plenty of space on the 32GB MicroSD card they give you and on the internal storage (8GB but only about 2.5 are available).  The only complaints I have about the hardware and design: no dedicated camera button, I really miss this, but it’s fairly minor; the bluetooth volume is super low, I’ve read that it only does it with some headsets but my Jabra is so low I cannot use it; and the GPS takes forever to lock on, sometimes 5-10 minutes.  Now, some of this is probably software-based so a fix may be in line (apparently there might be an update in the next month or so to address some of these issues as well as the random reboots caused by the last update) but until that fix is out these problems will remain.

Overall

So to sum this up in a few lines (TL;DR); I really like this phone a lot, it is a great phone by design.  The 1Ghz Snapdragon processor and the large amount of RAM really make this phone fly with apps and games and with Verizon’s 4G it really is a speedy phone in all faces.  However, the phone has many kinks due to some bad software that comes bundled with it and a broken update from HTC.  Most of it’s issues are solely based on the software so hopefully we will see fixes for them in the future.

Some first impressions: This thing is super fast, it’s got a nice feeling to it (not as solid as my DROID but still pretty well built), and the screen is really really nice.  The battery life isn’t as bad as everyone says it it…I got a full day out of it with fairly heavy use…we’ll see if that continues though.  I hate SenseUI…so I replaced it with ADW Launcher right away and I’m waiting for CyanogenMod to come out for it (it’s currently being worked on).  So expect some sort of review in the coming days/weeks…

I installed CM7 when it was at RC1 for the DROID (still buggy, but still good for everyday use) and I originally flashed my phone by doing a factory reset of the device (removes everything) and then installing the ROM. This gave me an endless boot screen.  What I had to do to fix this was not only do a factory reset, but wipe the cache partition AND the Dalvik cache partition.  This was easy with the ClockworkMod and it was also nearly 100% risk free since I had a complete Nandroid backup.  After wiping the two it booted successfully!

I noticed that in Android 2.3 Google will restore all of your previously purchased and downloaded apps if you want it to automatically on a new device (only the app itself, not the data..like game save data).  This is great, but I already decided to use MyBackup Root for this, mainly because I wanted to have my stuff there with all of the data.  So i just told the phone not to download everything and I’ll just restore everything from my backup.  What this left me with was broken installed apps with no way to update them because the Market links were all hosed.  This sucked, now what was I supposed to do?  I decided to flash again and allow Google to push the apps to my phone.  This process took some time but everything was downloaded for the most part; unfortunately, I didn’t have my app data, so all of my game data and all of my settings were gone…I check MyBackup and sure enough I was able to restore data only!  I did that and bingo, everything worked again with all of my old data!  A few apps needed to be reinstalled or needed their data wiped (Google maps and Facebook I think) but for the most part everything worked just as it was supposed to.

Choose which to restore? Yay!

So now that I had my apps on my phone, I was nearing happiness with my hacked DROID.  I say nearing because I was still having many issues with other things.  I won’t go into every little one but I will talk about the two that almost made me decide to go back to stock.

LED Notifications

The one thing I love about Android phones is the LED notifications.  A simple little LED in the corner of my phone blinks different colors for certain things (texts, emails, etc) so I don’t need to turn the screen on, or unlock my phone to see what I missed or see what that beep was from…I can just look at the color of the LED.  Funny thing happened after installing, it stopped working.  I would look down and nothing would be blinking but when I unlocked my phone I’d notice an e-mail that I missed!  What was going on here?  I looked in the settings and found that CM has basically rewritten the notification system and you can customize colors and blink rate from it if you so desired, but instead it broke the damn thing.  This wouldn’t fly with me, I was about to go back to stock because one of my favorite features was broken…then I found the forums.  I searched the issue on the forums and found a lot of people with the same issue, on different phones even!  Reading through many of the posts they all usually came around to the same solution, un-check everything in the LED settings then check them again then hit “Reset all LED notifications” and reboot. And it worked!  I had my LED back and working and now it was even better because I can change the settings for every program and even change the colors and blink rate for them, pretty neat.

Change color and rate for LED notifications

Missing Messages

Now that my LED notifications worked I was happy that I could look down and see if I missed any emails or (more importantly) text messages…but strangely I felt that I was receiving less messages.  I went an entire day without a text message, which is very odd for me actually.  I looked at my phone, no blinking LED, I unlocked the phone, no notification in the menu, I opened the messaging app and boom, new texts, some as old as a day!  What the hell was going on with this?  I’m missing text messages now?  This used to happen with my EnV Touch, never my DROID!  I tried resetting my notifications for the app, and it would work for a while after I opened the app.  I figured, okay, it’s fixed, but then it would stop later on in the day.  I was getting very frustrated with this now and was again thinking about going back to stock.  I hit the forums again and found one post about the issue with one simple solution:

The solution! Check that box!

Once I checked that, never missed another message.  It locks the message app in the memory so it’s always running.  Sure it uses up memory, but my messages are more important to me than the amount of apps I can run at one time.

Side note: But why does the DROID do this with CM7?  The DROID has 256MB RAM, this was a lot when the phone came out and with 2.1 it was fine.  Once 2.2 was released memory was becoming a problem for the phone.  The phone had trouble even keeping the Home app in memory; if you ran a program that was memory hungry and went back to the home screen you’d have to wait for it to redraw because Android’s memory management would kill it.  So in CM7 you can see the two check boxes for home and messaging, this stoped the redrawing(relaunching) and the missing messages…but it took some memory away of course which means you can only do so much multitasking before apps start getting killed.  Android 2.3.3 uses more memory, and the DROID just doesn’t have that much…so CM7 also allows asset purging to free up RAM as well as compucache (memory compression).  These use a little CPU but allow you to multitask fairly well;  it’s nowhere near as good as other newer phones, but it works.

There were some other small odds and ends that I had fixed by tweaking settings and installing updates but I thought that these two were really the most damming for me.  I managed to fix them with help from other nerds at the CyanogenMod Forums who were running into similar issues and there are some I managed to fix by trial and error.  Now, he ROM still has it’s occasional reboots and hiccups (not very often) and they usually happen with two programs; Google Maps and the Camera app, but these crashes happen less and less with each update.

CM7 is now out of RC and was released as Gold…but not for the DROID yet.  It still is very much a work in progress, but the progress is going very quickly, and I really like the direction it’s heading.  They’ve managed to give DROID users Android 2.3 even after Motorola decided it “wouldn’t work” on the phone.  Well, it is working (for the most part) and I’m fairly happy with it.  It has really allowed me to use my phone a bit longer than I was expecting.  I’m probably going to wait until August to upgrade my phone instead of going for the Thunderbolt, but time may change that.  What I do know is that my phone still works well and I will get more time out of it because of the ROMS.