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Tuesday, 23 June 2009

Nokia PC Suite bad, Nokia Ovi Suite worse

Nokia PC Suite and Ovi Suite
Nokia PC Suite has been changed a bit. Out: Nokia Music Manager. In: Nokia Music. The new gateway to Nokia's music store doesn't make PC Suite better, but it adds a boatload of extra megabytes to a program that was bloated to begin with.

PC Suite is still just a collection of programs held together with bubblegum, sellotape, and a worn user interface that shows how the program got patched together over time. And PC Suite still adds lots of things to your list of autostarting programs and services, so you'll have to do a lot of tweaking if you want to keep Windows on your PC lean and mean.

Nokia Ovi Suite is supposed to be the new, faster, lightweight, integrated program that combines the functions of the old sluggish PC Suite with Nokia Map Loader and Software Updater (the program to update the firmware of your phone). Of course it doubles as a shopping mall, because Nokia wants to make sure you don't ignore their music and software stores.

The beta test version of Nokia Ovi Suite shares PC Suite's requirement for Microsoft's .NET framework, and likes to crash often. A Mac version may be available somewhere in the distant future, but there's not much chance Nokia will ever port Ovi Suite to Linux. Nokia PC Suite does not work under WINE, but maybe Ovi Suite will? As for syncing mail and contacts, Nokia still believes that everybody uses Outlook. Too bad if you use Lotus Notes or Mozilla Thunderbird instead.

Nokia Ovi Suite requires a screen resolution of at least 1024x768 pixels, which may be a problem for netbooks, minilaptops, and other computers with small screens.

Nokia PC Suite
Nokia Ovi Suite

trick to make Nokia PC Suite let you into the system folders of your phone memory

For those who don't want to use PC Suite:

Linux programs with a little bit of PC Suite functionality
DAO4Sync, a lightweight computer-to-phone-and-back synchronisation tool
download maps for Nokia Maps with just a web browser
backup options for hacked phones: access points, bluetooth devices, bookmarks, calendar, cookies, messages, notes, profiles, and T9 dictionary
ActiveFile backs up and restores SMS messages much better than PC Suite
Contacts Transfer backs up, restores, and transfers contacts including pictures and caller groups


1 comment:

Unknown said...

I'm glad to hear someone else dislikes the Nokia suite! I cant wait Google Android comes out, hopefully then we won't have to depend on the handset vendors for this kind of software.

I want a simple, bluetooth enabled, SMS application. Keep it simple, stupid!