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Kaspersky vs proxies

Trying to find best antivirus, I have tried Kaspersky and here's what I have to say.

While it may be OK for home usage, it's a no-go for many corporate environments (like mine) which use script-driven proxy setup.




It just does not support .PAC script-based proxy setup, and so did not work for me.
And by the way, my previous companies also used such proxy setup.






Too bad for Kaspersky.
Not to speak of the higher pressure it puts onto system...
I tend to incline more and more along the way of thinking that it's software popularity is based more on marketing gimmicks like "personal touch" a-la Peter Norton, that quality merits.

And by the way, have you tried the free Microsoft Security Essentials?

It's got great usability! I can't speak of it's protective abilities (I'm sure Kaspersky will) but it's so easy to use and puts very light load on system, and nothing beats free. Recommended!

Thawte Web of Trust to kiss goodbye soon

In my email today was a sad announcement - Thawte, a well-renowned company providing security solutions to the Internet (mostly SSL certificates for web sites) is canning the free "Web of Trust" service on Nov 16th.

Web of Trust was a way to give people some electronic privacy in form of e-mail cryptography via freely-issued certificate.
That's the kind of stuff you'd configure in Tools-Options-Security menu (Outlook Express or Outlook).
I say "some" because the company might still keep your private key in some storage, and whoever has proper laws on their side, may get to that part of your e-privacy.
Any way, it's better to trust ONE government that trust EVERY intermediary provider, hacker, sniffer, rogue admin or the like.
That's called "reduction of attack surface".

"Why would we need Thawte, there are free tools for generating certificates" you'd ask.
Because a certificate has to be trusted, by default, each OS comes with an ample set of "root" certificates, those to whom every computer on the net has absolute (but not everlasting) trust.
Personal WoT certificates are signed by Thawte's CA (which are trusted via pre-installed root certs coming with most OSes) so your wot-secured e-mail would not cause a verification problem.

Anything singed by an untrusted root CA (certificate authority) is NOT trusted by most computers out there and will cause a problem that I briefly explained here.

What is Web-Of-Trust and how it helped keep constitutional right for personal privacy?

WoT is based on Notaries. A WoT Notary is a voluntary (unpaid) person with certain level of trust (not less than 100 points) who can certify that he has seen enrolling persons and verified their national ID (passport, driver license etc) and have recognized that they provided enough proof as of their name. The only piece of info that goes into WoT certificate is person's name and e-mail address, so that addressees (and e-mail client software) could positively identify the authenticity of e-mail correspondence.
"WoT Trust spreads thru the grapevine" one could say.

Basically speaking, you can get free "noname" certificate right now, but you can have your name on it only when you get some points from WoT notaries (by visiting them in person and showing your IDs).
As soon as you get your cert, you could SIGN your e-mail. Any change of your e-mail in transit (except for headers) would be detected by the addressee. In fact, that is like having your written signature on it.

As soon as your addressee has own digital ID, and because he has your public key from your signature on first e-mail, she could ENCRYPT their replies back to you, so that the content of e-mail could not be seen.
That's how privacy works. Both parties must have IDs and there must be a transfer of public key (for ex. via first signed e-mail or offline).

There are alternatives, of course, and I welcome you to discuss them in comments.

I am Sergey Zak and I'm a Thawte Web of Trust notary.

CheckPoint SecureClient

I have spotted one pleasant peculiarity (feature) of CheckPoint VPN SecureClient on Mac OS X - it warns user of imminent session expiration.

In my 4 years of usage, the PC version warns you only when you have lost connectivity, and annoys user with "Reconnect" requests for new RSA code.
But that, magically, never happens on a Mac. In fact, Mac users are politely warned BEFORE issues occur.

How gentle and nice of you, CheckPoint!

BTW if I was to compare CheckPoint VPN to Cisco VPN, I must say that Cisco has one annoying feature turned on by default, and it takes a lot extra effort to fix that - all traffic goes to VPN tunnel.
This means that if remote secure network does not support a service you want to have (SMTP, POP, Skype, whatever), you're toast until you disconnect.

Quite important for telecommuters.

All in all (taken into consideration the admin tools) CheckPoint software is much more usable and has better GUI.
I only wished their installers properly removed (upgraded) their previous versions...

Insecure certification? Say no.

If you, like me, have worked for some corporation, or even smaller company with an Intranet, then you'd recognize this kind of screenshots:

It's a long standing security issue and the one I just read an article about here

For people without due understanding of certificates and why they are used, this is a non-issue - they just click "Continue" or something to that effect - and go on.
But the devil is in the details, as we know.

I think it's about time we stopped allowing that.

Besides presenting a usability issue, namely a "nag" dialog, it also de-voids one of two purposes of certificates - it does not verify the server's authenticity, allowing for so called "man-in-the-middle" attack.

The second, remaining, purpose is encryption against eavesdropping, but this one will also be crippled if you're talking to "the wrong" server after clicking "Continue" on invalid certificate.
Simply because the eavesdropper will be the non-authenticated (fake, malicious) server with similarly incorrect certificate, to which you'd blindly accept connection.

Such practice had been "convenient to user", who needed a way to access things, and "merciful to developer" who did not want to spend money on SSL certificates from established Certificate Authorities.
Well, there's been epoch with no condoms, and people suffered greatly while not realizing there's an exit.
As more and more electronic fraud and hacking dilutes quality of online life, there's more and more need to establish better standard practices.
Now web looks like only richer folks can buy needed protection. The rest of us have to "blindly click extra".

Time to revisit what stops us from helping every website?

I would suggest to "close the cap" by disabling access from all browsers to invalid certificates.

The only exception left would be VALID self-signed certificates, but they should be separately indicated in browsers by a special icon (not the padlock as with CA-signed certificates). Such exception leaves out one vector of attack - DNS.

And for future development, there is a need to secure DNS, too.
I think there can be one solution to both problems.

An option to get certificate when registering your domain name!
(Directly from the registrar.)

Think of this - we trust DNS, should not this trust be augmented by certification?

Unfortunately, this would mean serious increase in business for registrars and decrease for CAs.
Well, good does not come without changing.
Besides, I think they are in the right position to lobby this as a new web standard.

For registrars, that would be an additional competition vector.

Cloud computing

I was thinking of those 'new' paradigms and buzzwords.
I believe the strife to create such ecosystem is easily explained:

If it's called 'cloud computing' then how do you call someone who 'sits on a cloud'?

Their usual mantra is "have your information anywhere" which actually means "we hope to have all your info and lend you access to it" + "you must also pay the internet fee whenever you want to use your data".
No suprise, as usual, the best business is when you sell people something they already have.

Either way, IP communication companies have brighter future.

Web is making new mistakes

Lo and behold! The web is making new mistakes.
But before I explain what, let's first look at previous common mistakes and misconceptions, made by way too many designers, software architects or coders during those "Internet boom era" days (some might say "dark days")...

1. "That darned encoding stuff"
That was way uncool in the 90s, when you got and e-mail with incorrect encoding set, or arbitrarily changed by one of SMTP relays, or not set at all.
According to RFC2047, if an encoding of a body or subject is not indicated, it should be treated as ASCII.

"Thanks" to development of web clients (browsers, instant messengers and e-mail clients) which allowed to override this RFC by setting "Default" encoding (changing it from RFC ASCII to accomodate lame content), many other developers and web masters could still not care to indicate international encoding in their content, nor process it properly in case of relays and web platforms. They relied purely on user setting his "Default" encoding to his native language (for me, that was Русский).

All this havoc continued until the bloom of Unicode in XXI century, and nowadays most e-mail bodies are properly encoded and re-coded, while I cannot quite say the same for e-mail subject lines (especially from some forum/BBS platforms).
AOL seems to have fixed their ICQ offline messages encoding only with the latest update of protocols, which broke some clients. That was one reason why RFC822 was not that widely accepted.


2. Browser wars (image courtesy of Saint Michael's blog)
Vertiginous success of Microsoft Explorer as the dominant browsing technology, coupled with Microsoft's competitive practice of ignoring or bastardizing standards, led de-facto to a massive deviation from official W3C standards and behaviours.
Many webmasters never tested their stuff on another browser.
Most companies shrugged of the need to allow a bigger budget for true "web compatibility" testing of their intranets.
The competitive ecosystem was not healthy when Microsoft almost monopolized the market. Microsoft's "Embrace and Extend" strategy had it's negative impact on true multivendor/multiclient compatibility in the Web.
Not only Microsoft's to blame, of course.
Netscape, which probably had 85% browser market share before Windows 95 came out, had made a decision which caused it lose the leadership: to re-write the browser from scratch. Thanks to that, we now have Mozilla Firefox!
Firefox, Google and Apple are leading the world to a standards-based future.

Now, what's wrong with some modern and popular web sites?

With the rise of user location services based on incoming IP address, it became possible to have a fair guess about which country user is in.
The wrong part about it's usage is that some major sites simply imply your native language from your location!
THIS IS VERY WRONG!
And even the fact that it works for majority should not preclude your clear judgement.
Just like ASCII worked for most users in the early 90s simply because most users were in U.S., we should not lay a new time bomb with incorrect usage of the metadata.

First of all, not all people living in a particular country, can read in local language. Some are travellers, some are expats, some from ethnical minorities.
Secondly, with the current state of corporate globalization, there are web proxy servers which are placed in one country per region. The regions are APAC (Asia and Pacific), EMEA (Europe Middle East Africa), LAT (Latin America), NAM (North America). Those comprise communities of different languages, whereas having a single geolocation point on the map, speaking from IP address perspective.
Just imagine some global company install a major web proxy in China - should most employees then be greeted by all major sites in Chinese?

In order to let websites know about user's language preferences, there is RFC2616 (Accept-Language header) and Language preferences in browsers, where user can set up the order of preference for the languages he wants in web content.
Good usage examples of are here or here.

I strongly believe we all should comply to standards, instead of using geo-location as an indication of user's preferred language.

NB: There is a silver lining in such incorrect websites' behaviour - I cannot read popup advertisements of those banner networks which rely on location of my company proxy.

6 things I will still miss in iPhone 3GS

1/ syncing over wifi (or bluetooth)
2/ video call
3/ haptics
4/ themes
5/ USB storage mode
6/ flash support

I will miss those, but (!) I will enjoy the rest!

Ah, and MMS support is quite lousy in 3.0... Just an attachment (no background color, no text formatting, no multi-page animations, no sound attachments). A half-hearted attempt, driven by mass-bickering more than belief...

UI metaphor collision... or not?

Person A >> Hmm.. I wonder why computer 'desktops' are covered with 'wallpapers', not with 'tablecloths'?

Person B >> You see, monitors are vertical, so tablecloths would not hold.

Source here

What's next for iPhone?

I have been watching Steve Jobs giving iPhone lauch Keynote 2007 and it just struck me - he was talking about Visual VoiceMail as "just an example" of "what's coming", and he assured the public that "this is just a first fruit" of cooperation between Apple Inc. and AT&T. He underscored that point, obviously it was important for him.

"The innovative Visual Voicemail feature lets you view all your voicemail messages at once, then listen to them in the order you prefer. Use the Play/Pause button to control playback of your voice messages. The scrubber bar even lets you replay portions of a message you find hard to understand"

In fact, the telecom industry, as a whole, has not been fast to adopt IT-led innovations, and Visual VoiceMail is not an exclusion from that.

(Reality Check: Of those coutries where iPhone is sold, how many have VVM now?)

It does not take much observation power to see that user services innovation rate is much slower in telecom than it is in IT. This only adds to user's attachment to the Intenet and aversion to mobile operator "innovations".

Nokia takes on that with it's Ovi services suite. But Ovi is completely IP-based.

Is there a space for innovation of telecom-based services?
Will Apple take lead in that?

As if that "left hook" from Apple's honcho was not enough, there was a second hidden punch, an uppercut done by Cingular's chief Stan Sigman who went on stage and, incidentally, talked on the same subject - how Apple innovated [their sleepy] telecom kingdom.
At about 6:30 down the show he talks about partnerships with Apple, and at 7:35 he mentions VisualVoiceMail, ominously uttering "and I promise - you'll see more of that coming down the road".

Now, hold on. WHAT could they mean?

Well, I have an idea.
It seems so that right now we are in need of "3G saviour", a killer app which would be the differentiator, a watershed, between old-style 2G networks and the new ones, "innovated and reinvigorated with some help of Apple Inc."
Of course, I hear you say, internet via 3G is so much faster!
Well, but WiFi on a 2G handset can give you better speed, not to talk of a wired computer.

And what about VideoCalls? "Yuck!", you'd say, "who needs those?"

Well, sure, like nobody "needed" internet on a handset before iPhone.
Remember, when there's no market, there's opportunity to create one - exactly Apple's business.

I'm very sure that further innovations in mobile networks must focus on this single feature - mobile video call.

First of all, video quality must be improved.
Current 3GPP codecs were developed during the 90s era - they are just pure crap by modern merits, even when compared to YouTube's FLV (Flash Video) compression.
Ripping and replacing them for H.264 or some proper codec would be the first great step to improve usage rate.
Of course, next comes into play the high usability of iPhone user interface.

If it's easy to use and the quality/price is great - people will use it.

Why would you not make a "killer app" (and a cash-cow) out of that?
iPhone could do it to mobile internet usage, it can do the same revenue increase with proper use of video calls.

It also takes some consideration to notice that video calls are of greater use to long-distance (like Paris/Rome tourists calling Moscow home) and business users (telecommuting, making it a corp policy to call workers with video).
While the former group makes it harder to implement (all CSPs must be capable to handle the new H.264 codecs), the latter group is much easier to harness (as was demonstrated by the Windows gang) - they are policy-driven. And policies are centralized...

Next gen iPhone would need a separate frontal camera for video call.
I was surprised when I did not see videocall demo by Steve at Keynote 2008, along with launch of iPhone 3G. There must be more to do, to be ready for such massive roll-out. New standards, RAN upgrades, new mobile phones...

Could this happen this year? Probably not, "thanks" to reduced budgets for innovations, worldwide.
But I secretly hope it's still in the iPhone's+AT&T roadmap.
Maybe LTE version?

Can't hold it, sorry. Have to share.

"Wisdom #403460" from bash.org.ru (Russian)

"Create a simpler user interface and the world will come up with dumber users"

One more exploit for Nokia 1208

As a follow-up to previous topic, here's another firmware defect on Nokia 1208.
Let's ironically call it "a longer way to reboot", or a "Nokian way of Ctrl+Alt+Del"?

Here's how to epxloit it:

1/ From the main screen, press Down button to go to Contacts
2/ Open any contact
3/ Press Down button to see contact Name, not number
4/ Select "Options" by pressing Left soft button
5/ Scroll down to "Copy Contact" and select it
6/ Press Back, as to cancel contact copy
7/ Now scroll to "Delete Contact" and select it

Boom, RESTART
Enjoy

Exploiting a Nokia 1208? Why not?

There are simple things you are almost always sure of. Water pipes, electricity, central heating, cell phones... Ooops!
Did I say "cell phones"? In fact, most often than not, you could find some ways to hinder its' performance. Even for the smallest ones, the dumbest ones.

Take Nokia 1208, for example.
Who'd ever think that this "flashlight" phone, running sub-par version (is it S20, I'm not sure) can be exploited?

Now, don't hold your breath, the exploit is purely local - only phone's user can do it.
It can not be said of as a "security breach", just a fun with firmware, an example of attention needed for thorough and rigorous testing.

You can cause stack overflow and phone restart with the following routine:

1/ Press "Menu", go to "Messages"






2/ Select "Message Settings"

3/ You will see 10 items, starting with "Info Service". Note the number 1 in upper right.

4/ You can scroll down all 10 items, and you will roll back at "Info Service", number one.

5/ Press "Select", then press "Back". Notice the scroller on the scroll bar became smaller!


6/ Now, if you keep scrolling down, you will start passing numbers 11, 12, 13 and so on. The list got duplicated as result of step 5.

7/ Repeat step 4, going into "Info Message" and back. Try scrolling down again, looking up numbers and notice the increasing thinness of the scroller.



8/ Once you have appended list 6 times, you will pass number 71 "Info Service".






9/ One step down and boom - your phone restarts. Enjoy.

Of course this is very geeky and who cares about such kind of "local exploit" but hey - just for your fun and info!
Firmware RH-105 v3.72

A Lifeblog integration tip

A while ago, I ranted about lack of integration between Lifeblog, Notes and Sound Recorder on my Nokia N95.

Turns out - half of those woes can be resolved by the user, although at the price of sound recording quality.

LifeBlog is able to pick up, show and transfer to PC Sound Recordings, but only those recorded in AMR format.

I don't mind a little bit more compression, as long as speaker's voice is loud enough to be legible.

Turning to Settings - Applications - Voice Recorder and tweaking File Type a little bit enables LifeBlog to recognize any new recordings. (depicted)
And so - they are backed up to PC via "bigger brother", LifeBlog on PC.

No more separate file-digging! (and there was NO syncing of recordings from PC Suite, either!)

Wonderful.

If only there was some hack to enable similar integration with Notes...
Anybody got a tip?

Wii are the champions

Checking up Nintendo Wii for a week (bought it as a gift, in advance).
First impression - it's very tightly built, very good quality of materials, all connectors connect very easily and they have easily understandable, not confusing outlines and forms, and all use different colors. Gives you a nice feel to setup such nicely-built system.

Starting up gives you tons of warnings - you must be over 18 to legally set it up. Otherwise, you kiddies are breaking the Nintendo agreement and when you get injured boxing, or break that antique vase that cost your daddy 150K - Nintendo just wash they hands and smile happily. (Ask your parent to read EULAs and press A button!)

User interface is so immersive! Wii Remote gives slight rumbles when you point at buttons on screen. It also emits sounds in-game. Really cool and important for multiplayer (indicates who's turn in Bowling, for ex.)

The "Channels" concept nicely replaces "PC programs" concept; instead of "PC desktop" you have "Wii Menu".
That's it - no wondering around. Just 4 screens of 12 channels each (max 48 channels).
I had 6 channels installed, but, after visiting Wii Shopping Store, increased to 9, for free.

It's really nice and easy, and good for your body. The best video-gaming for your body. Fitness is better - but, you know, there's Wii Fit set on sale...

What bothered me most in user experience is annoying Yes/No confirmation menu when you try for Wii Menu from within a game or an activity. If you press "Home" button on Wii Remote, you first get Home menu where you can select an action.
Usually those include "Wii Menu" , "Reset" , "Wii Remote Settings" , and "Operation Manual".
You move the pointer, you get the rumble as you focus. You do confirm by pressing "A" button.

But, in case of "Wii Menu", you get that extra Yes/No confirmation dialog.

Why do they consider everyone so stupid - to make so many actions already and STILL get ANOTHER nag dialog - does not seem reasonable to me. Is this some cultural difference?
Even if there's danger of mistakenly going to Wii Menu - why not every mistake is covered by confirming dialog?
This is Windows 95 style and ought to be avoided.
Those who do mistake, do learn and stop mistaking.

Why pester everybody on such common action?

Another note - and quite understandable - is that there are too many warnings in Sports Pack.
Those are usually to make sure you're strapped, have a jacket on Wii Remote, have enough space, have thumbs to hold the remote tightly etc.
Let's count them - I will recount for you all user interactions on my way to start Bowling, single user game.

1. Open "Disc Channel" from Wii Menu. You will see channel preview.
2. From the channel preview, pick "Start". This brings up a remote jacket warning.
3. From the jacket warning page, you either timeout or press A after some reading delay and you get new window.
4. Now you're asked to press A+B buttons simultaneously. Is this to check that you have a working thumb and index fingers?
5. Finally you get Wii Sports menu - here you select which game of 5 you want. Press Bowling.
6. Number of players, or training mode. Press 1.
7. Here you're asked to select Mii (artizans) per each player.
8. Another jacket warning! Press A to continue.
9. Al last, you see the game intro. First player is asked to press A+B to confirm.
10. Real bowl begins. Make a throw. If you do incorrect throw, Wii will warn you and make you press B to confirm.
11. Now you've (hopefully) scored a throw. Alt angle replay, plus cheering voice comment. Nice. Press A and repeat steps 10 until game end.
12. Game Finished. You see your final score, as well as all scores. Press A.
13. Final screen. You see your current Skill Level in chosen game, and it's dynamics. Nice. Press "Again" to go to 9 or "Quit" to go to 5.

Is not it a bit too much of confirming? You have to be pretty determined to get into play.
Makes sense to warn once, or maybe 3 times - but every time? I know we're talking about children here.
I can understand. I just wonder if there's another way, like fast voice warnings while the games load?
(By the way, not every child CAN read those warnings! I am not even talking about who WILL read)

Last up, my thought on improving the channel content - we need more free channels.
Why not turn it into something like Nokia WidSets, where anyone can write a useful bit of functionality (stock quotes, web clips, car alarm integration, world-wide web cams) and put it in for Nintendo's approval, and be sold in Wii Shopping Channel with some revenue split like Apple does in iTunes App Store?
Right now it seems rather limited - and I can understand that Nintendo wants us to spend more on GAMES.

What if I am not a gamer type but I like the console and I hate PC and I don't have a Mac?
Those types are mostly senior/disabled citizens, or there are some people who have adverse opinion on PC at home (I had one programmer friend who never had a PC at home, intentionally) - but anyway - they can be made a paying audience while their kids are at school.

A touch to Nokia 5800 XpressMusic (aka Tube)

This year, I am starting with a new resolution - to make my posts here shorter and easier to read.
I am not targeting to please everybody with a 'balanced' position, this blog would give technically correct comment - but not from an engineer's point of view - I have preserved ability to view things with a fresh user's eye.

One day I had walked into Nokia flagship store in Moscow, specifically to try and judge for myself "the buzz" about Nokia 5800.

It was a sturdy device, moderate weight.
I checked sound quality first, using a pair my new Etymotics ER-4P earbuds.
I was pleasantly surprised with increased power (compared to my N95), and the sound quality seemed better than N95.
But both sound quality and sound power were less than those of an iPod Touch that I also tried.
So far, Tube seems to be on par with other XpressMusic phones (5310 comes to mind).
I checked the Bluetooth file transfer between SonyEricsson P910i that I had in my pocket and Nokia 5800 - it worked fine, although a bit slow because of old Bluetooth standard supported by P910i.
I wanted to check for improvements in the Nokia Music Player and Podcasts integration, but the flagship store does not have a WiFi access point, and no SIMs inserted in the phones, and so Mobile Computer buyers simply do not have a chance to check online capabilities!
I think this could be improved by setting up a secured WiFi access point and setting up the AP password in smart phones (S60), at least the most popular (N-series). Otherwise it's not possible to check browser, Downloads!, WidSets, MOSH, and others.

Next on, the navigation. At first I was a bit confused with unusual 3-button setup (no d-pad), but then something more annoying came up -

Some things you do by single tap, some - you have to double tap!

Before trying out, I did not realize how annoying it is!
Sometimes it gives you impression that the touch screen is not working!
The only obvious reason for double tap is so that you could use the Options menu. Single tap selects item, then you can tap on Options or quickly tap again to launch/open item.
This bad user interaction design drags it's ugly head from non-touch S60; Nokia really ought to have a look whether it's worth it to serve non-touch dishes in a touch restaurant to cater existing S60 users...
If you go to a Chinese restaurant, don't you expect things to be really different from, say, McDonalds?
What if they set up single-tap policy for every launch, while reserving tap-n-hold for Options menu?
It was this way in UIQ - plus there was JogDial for easy re-selection, and there were checkboxes beside every item that can be selected.

Does the S60-UIQ antagonism continue, even after whole Symbian belong to Nokia?

Now, that they started to put out touchy-feely things, and UIQ went haywire - isn't it the time to borrow the best and create a perfectly converged device?

My final feelings are that Tube does not really reach the UI efficiency of P910i, the phone which was produced 5 years ago.

Checked the Camera - it's slow-ish, the screen gets smudged as you move and view around as you aim. Not so bad as XM5310 (which is almost unbearable), but quite noticeable. Of course, here comes the usual line - "this phone is not marketed as a photo solution".

Quite convenient are the two slots on the left - one for microSD card, another for the SIM module.
I wonder if changing SIM could damage the module...

Tube screen is very decent; I started to edit a message and I noticed some screen mis-calibration: tapping with the plectrum in the middle of a word, and the cursor inserts four character left in the word.
Asked a nearby consultant - he did not know how to re-calibrate and he thought it impossible. I later found it myself in the Settings panel, did a very precise re-calibration, but the cursor was still inserting one character left from the place touch. Could have been an old firmware bug (there was version 10.x) or some hardware defect.

I checked the Handwriting text input method - and I was perfectly surprised!
IT WORKS! AT LAST!
Remembering my pitiful attempts to write on N800/810, I was kind of sceptic.
But it was working really fine, and the best of all - in Cyrillics (Russian) letters, too!
I could never get Primetech Jot to work on my P910 (it's for Russian handwriting on UIQ).
Checked the usual "t" "!" "?" "@" and all of them were recognized at my expected speed of natural quick jot.
Did they finally accept the Jot engine used in P910? P910 is still better in this area because you can write anywhere on it's screen (in fact, lower half of screen for letters, upper - for numbers; crossing the middle dotted line capitalizes character)
In the Tube you have special amply sized palette to write on - but it's not "half of screen", still.

Noticing that I did not get "tactile touch feedback", once again, I turned to a store consultant. In vain. They seem to be best at saying "hello" to all incoming visitors (they have policied this).
I myself could not find the setting, too.
Should not it be in the same Display control applet?

All impressions wrapped up, I would not buy this phone. I was spoilt by UIQ2.1/P910i, and I have tried iPhone for a week.
But if all you really liked, all you've had was Nokia phones, go ahead, you won't be disappointed.
(You might switch from non-touch solutions by SonyEricsson, Sagem, Samsung, MOTO and the like, too!)

After all - there is Nokia Maps, a decent Music Player, you can finally write letters, not to tap them like a woodpecker...and it does not break a wallet like iPhone does (oh, this should be Russia-specific comment - iPhone here costs 25000 RUR, Tube 15000 RUR) nice anti-crisis purchase for those who do not get Apple and it's closely-controlled nature.