Stop it, you're making it far too easy!

Published by Steve Litchfield at 5:30 UTC, May 12th 2006

Nokia's PC Suite's come a long way from its humble PsiWin and EPOC Connect ancestry. But come on, installing connectivity software's supposed to be really, really tricky, isn't it? Surely half the fun of PDAs and smartphones is spending hours despairing with your head in your hands?

Far too easy 

I restarted my PC this morning and PC Suite politely popped up a Windows Update-style box saying that an update was available and did I want to grab it. Now, I've had all sorts of horror stories in the past, involving multiple de-installs of PC Suite, running its Cleaner utility, having to reinstall Windows itself and acknowledging countless device driver dialogs. But there was something about this new, ultra-compact request that was different.

Taking a deep breath, I hit the pop-up and got a more detailed dialog, confirming the new version number, the size and date of the update and the main thing it fixed. And a big 'Update now' button. In for a penny, in for a pound, I hit 'Update now'.

And then found myself almost asleep, the rest of the download and install was so uneventful. The 19MB update downloaded in 2 minutes flat, installed itself in the background (no deinstallation of previous versions needed, hurrah) while I read my email and then asked to restart the PC. On the restart, PC Suite popped up the 'Get connected' wizard, but I cancelled it as my Bluetooth-enabled N70 had already popped up in the system tray, properly connected.

Err... surely it can't be that simple? No drama? Come on. I plugged my 9500 into the USB cable. 2 seconds later, it popped up in the tray. Right, this'll sort it, I plugged in the prototype N91 via its mini-USB lead. Instantly recognised, a handful of small yellow status popups while drivers were sorted and then the N91 was available too.

But come on, installing connectivity software's supposed to be really, really tricky, isn't it? Surely half the fun of PDAs and smartphones is spending hours despairing with your head in your hands? If it's this slick and easy then everyone's going to be able to do it and... well, there you have it, the man in the street is just going to install this and join the connected smartphone crowd. Millions of them.

In all seriousness, although making PC Suite's installation slicker and bug-free is long, long overdue, kudos to Nokia for sorting it out at last. With tens, even hundreds of millions of S60 smartphones being sold in the next year or so, a connection suite that didn't cause major problems for a significant proportion of people had to be found, if only to stop Nokia support lines going into meltdown.

Ewan mentioned yesterday that he no longer worries about sync problems, entry duplications and the like. Neither do I. And now I don't even have to worry about the next time I update PC Suite.

Well done to the PC Suite team. Peace of mind at last.

Steve Litchfield, 12 May 2006

Categories: Editorial Thoughts
Platforms: Series 60, Series 80, Series 90, General

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