Nokia Sucks At Desktop Apps
I’ve been putting this post off for quite a while, in hopes that something would change. It hasn’t. Nokia rocks at mobiles. I believe that to the depths of my heart, and it’s been drilled home with device after device that I discover I couldn’t live without. But they suck at desktop applications.
I’ve always sync’d my phones with my PC with PC Suite. From my 6620 through every other Nokia I buy, I won’t use it if I can’t sync it. Period. Thus, I’m always using Nokia’s desktop applications. PC Suite, Map Loader, Nokia Software Updater, Lifeblog, I’ve run them all. With the new Nseries PC Suite, available here from Beta Labs, they’ve actually brought all these applications in under the PC Suite umbrella, which, in my opinion is brilliant. Makes it super-easy.
The problem, though, is that these apps are RIDICULOUS memory hogs.
I don’t have a slow computer. It’s an Intel Centrino Duo 1.8Ghz with
1GB of RAM. Nokia’s apps bring it to a screeching halt. I can’t stand
slow computers.
The problem seems to be stability. Personally, I’ve never really had an
issue with PC Suite. However, I’ve heard NUMEROUS people on forums and
over IM say that they despise PC Suite, that it crashes on them
constantly or they can’t get it to connect. I know that when I connect
my phone via the USB cable, it can take up to 5 minutes for PC Suite to
realize it’s a phone and get to work.
The more recent applications such as Nseries PC Suite, Nokia Music
Manager, Nokia Video Center, and the like, are very pretty
applications. That prettiness, though, comes at the price of usability.
It should not take 5 minutes on this computer for these applications to
open. End of story.
I don’t know exactly how to fix it, either. Normally, I don’t like to
rant without offering at least one solution. So here it is: Nokia, go
buy a few computers. Old computers. We’re talking Pentium 3-4 machines
with 512MB of RAM. Design your apps to run quickly on there. I promise
you, it’ll be a good decision. If you can design an application that
runs quickly and with stability on a Pentium 4, then it should be
disgusting-fast and stable on a dual-core or quad-core computer.
I totally agree.
And I’m afraid that the only remedy for clumsiness of PC Suite is completely rewriting it from the scraps - Nokia should really consider it.
Regards
Wow, the timing of your post was impeccable. I’ve been trying to install this new suite and was having nothing but problems. I hit up HoFo to rant a bit, then I came here to see if you’d had any comments on it. Nothing up, but I had a few stories to catch up, go back to the main page, here this is.
I wish they’d just give me some sort of phone management software for linux, that way I don’t have to fire up Vista anymore. I know thats a pipedream for now, but hey, Nokia, we know you read this, there are some of us who would like that alot. =)
umm interesting. coming from a software engineering background, i think the new pc suite is fantastic piece of work.
my old pc is of a lower spec than your post and iv had no issues what so ever, runs seamlessly. with no memory hog. (1gb ram also).
Darren.
Yeah I agree with you. My desktop PC is a pentium 4..and only have 512Mb Ram..which is slow, & Btw, I’m using XP FP1..so I can’t install new nokia pc softwares.. but the Nokia PC Suite sucks.. it is slow…
I got the same problem as hakeemm: I’m running Win2k so I can’t install -NET 3.0 which means I can’t install new versions of any Nokia app.
For what in bloody hell do they need .NET 3.0? The Software only has to sync several datatypes, there’s nothing fancy you would need .NET 3.0 for.
arg….
I think this is the same issue with Motorola.
The fact is that they don’t “actually” write the sync programs, they hire other companies to write it for them. Most of these software are written by 3rd rate programmers using Visual Studio .NET. Which explains the memory hog very well, also, most of these programmers don’t even have degrees in comp. sci. or related discipline.
This is where Apple kicks butt with their iTunes syncing ability. “It just works!”
Damn … it’s also doesn’t cost $35 … ;(
I installed the Nseries PC suite the other day expecting great things from it - and promptly uninstalled it!
Okay, it’s only beta but crikey it stinks.
First off is that it has even less support for my N91 than 6.84 has. My N91 is only just over a year old and cost me £500, yet Nokia seems to have completely forgotten that they made this phone. The new Music Store feature…? Hello…N91 here, music phone??? The application installer in 6.84 has trouble telling the phone memory and HDD apart and so all apps just get sent to the phone and I have to select where I want to install to from there. But the Nseries PC suite App installer doesn’t even recognise my N91, despite being connected. Nokia Photos app…crashes at start up with some “could not create window” error.
A few other hiccups too but the biggest annoyance to me is that Nokia seem to have completely missed a trick. Why-oh-why do they not have IP connectivity? Almost all E and N series phones are wifi phones and I have a ton of 3rd party apps that happily use the wifi, so why can’t PC suite use it? I would like nothing more than to throw my bluetooth dongle in the bin and chuck my cable into the bottom of my bag-of-cables-I-will-never-need-again. And just how useful would PCSync be if it accepted IP connections? I could remote backup and sync all my PIM data from anywhere in the world with IP connectivity.
And yes I know there are online SyncML server/apps but I don’t want to spread even more of my most personal data all over the web. I want my data on my machines, controlled by me. I can trust me with my personal data but I’ve no such trust in all these ‘reputable’ companies with their pro forma, copy & paste privacy statements.
Nokia does indeed suck at PC apps!
Great post! So the other day I was downloading a 20 meg map file using MapLoader. First, it shouldn’t take half an hour to download a file like that (Nokia, do a deal with Google or Amazon and get out of the file service business please!). Second, the “remaining download time” eventually hit 0, then continued into negative numbers, showing me I had -32 seconds to wait for my download to finish. Have you ever seen a progress bar go negative? Isn’t the whole point of a progress bar to let you rest assured that once it reaches 0 you’re done? This has to be a new watershed in shoddy programming.
Apr 12th, 2008 at 1:00 am
[…] alot of heat for its desktop apps, or sometimes, lack thereof. I know even I have been known to go off about this, and rightfully so. One of the biggest complaints that I hear about Nokia, in regards to desktop […]