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Our take on the Google Nexus 4 smartphone

Based on the specs, doesn’t appear to live up to the expectations set by its predecessors. The “Nexus” line of smartphone from Google so far has always brought in some technological advancement. But the Nexus 4 falls short in that area.

Design-wise nothing out of the ordinary — a classic, large screen, smartphone. Similar story under the hood. Resolution (1280×768) is in line with most of the rest of the recent smartphones. CPU, RAM & ROM sizes are similar to what we’ve seen in the Samsung Galaxy S3 and other models as well. No LTE connectivity, which might be disappointing for some users (although to us HSPA+ seems more than appropriate for casual internet use).

The only real advancement is at the software level, since the Nexus 4 introduces Android 4.2.

The biggest shortcoming? No memory expansion capabilities (lacking micro sd support), which appears to be in line with what we’ve seen with its predecessor.

The biggest plus? Price point, unlocked at $299 (for the 8GB version) is half the price of a Samsung Galaxy S3 (although the latter appears rather superior in specs and features to the Nexus 4, OS-version aside).

Our take: if you have a 2 years old smartphone and you’re planning to get a new one, then the Nexus 4 is definitely something we feel like recommending (especially if you like the “plain vanilla” OS free from OEM’s customizations). If you own a Samsung Galaxy S3 or similar recent, high-end model, the you can safely pass on the Nexus 4. At any rate chances are Android 4.2 will be delivered to most of the recent smartphones in the coming months.

Have a different opinion? Something to add? Share it with us!

http://www.techietakes.com/2012/10/30/our-take-on-the-google-nexus-4-smartphone/

#android 4.2 #google #nexus 4 #smartphone #take

Download complete photo albums from Facebook with PhotoGrabber

Ever run into the situation where you’d like to download a number of pictures from a Facebook photo album of yours or of some of your friends?

In most cases what you’d end up doing is to start your web browser, visit the related photo album, view each of the pictures you are interested into, right click on it and select the menu “save picture as…” (or similar depending from the web browser used), and finally save it somewhere on your desktop or laptop.

Luckily, there’s a much easier way to accomplish what described above, by using a photo download tool. Many of the ones we checked are hosted services, i.e. in order to get the album downloaded you’ll have to allow the related Facebook app and 3rd party service to access your Facebook account, grab the photos, crunch them somewhere else, and then deliver you a zip file containing the album.

A better alternative is to use an open source app, PhotoGrabber, which runs on your pc, and downloads the album directly. Granted you’ll still have to allow the related PhotoGrabber Facebook app to access your account, this is a required step in order for the desktop client to get to the album(s) whose photos you wish to download.

Have a better way to download pictures off Facebook? Share it with us!

http://www.techietakes.com/2012/10/29/download-complete-photo-albums-from-facebook-with-photograbber/

#desktop client #facebook #open source #photo album

File Explorer: add "Search my files" to the right click menu

Missing the “Search…” right click menu item present in Windows XP, and then abandoned in favor of Windows’ 7 and above global search and indexing?

Here’s an easy way to add it, and to learn about an extremely fast real-time (i.e. doesn’t rely on an index db or similar) search tool in the process.

Download “SearchMyFiles” from nirsoft.com [direct links: 32bit | 64bit], and save it somewhere on your system’s disk.

Unzip the file downloaded and place the .exe wherever you prefer (we’ll assume : c:\Program Files\nirsoft\searchmyfiles.exe)

Launch launch searchmyfiles.exe

Select its menu Options and then “Explorer Context Menu”

From then on when right clicking on any drive or folder you’ll see a new item in the right click menu, allowing to quickly get to the search screen provided by searchmyfiles.

Type in your search term, press enter and matching files & folders will soon start to appear in the results portion of the tool.

http://www.techietakes.com/2012/10/26/add-search-my-files-to-windows-explorer-right-click/

#file explorer #how-to #right click menu #tip #windows

Welcome to techietakes.com

Hello and welcome,

TechieTakes is a brand new technology blog whose aim is to “cut to the chase” on the personal technology topics (and more!) which we see making the rounds in the news on a daily basis.

On this website you won’t find lengthy reviews about this or that product, or extensive comparisons about technologies, or stats. Chances are you won’t find “breaking news” or “exclusives” either — there are plenty of online venues already covering these topics to exhaustion, and we don’t plan to jump into that fray

Rather, what you’ll find here are short, or as-short-as-possible, “takes”, i.e. “opinions” [reference] on topics that tend to have a technology slant, but not always (and hence the category “others”).

We will cut through the marketing babble and tech terminology to provide useful information you can use to answer some of the questions you may be pondering (like “should I upgrade my phone to this new model?”, or “what’s the best way to backups files between my two laptops?”).

A couple of words on the items in the navigation bar and what they refer to:

Home: where all the articles end up.

News: latest news, often accompanied with our commentary.

Tech: our “takes” on gadgets, operating systems, social initiatives, consumer electronics, etc. Here you might find out opinion on the iPhone 5, or a quick comparison about Windows 8 and its predecessor, or our opinion on Pinterest, and so on.

Tips: how-tos, suggestions, or “best practices” to get the most out of gadgets, apps, and whatnot. You might also find here a tip on how to clean-up the preferences in Firefox, or on how to download photo albums from Facebook, or on how to prepare a great fat-free and sugar-free chocolate mousse in less than 20 minutes (we all get hungry at some point).

Others: we reserved this category for anything else that doesn’t specifically fall in the ones abovementioned.

And, last but not least, all “takes”, tips. etc. are approached with a “techie” sort of mindset: get the thing done, get it done nicely, and get it done fast.

We hope you’ll enjoy reading the articles here on TechieTakes, and we look forward to exchange opinions with you on the articles’ comments sections.

Yours truly,

- Team TechieTakes

http://www.techietakes.com/2012/10/25/welcome-to-techietakes/

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