Back to the bad old days?

I've had a Nokia smart phone for a while now. Its a C30, the reviews I have read suggest that it should be a great phone. It was relatively cheap, and was intended to be an introduction to smart phones. There are several problems with it. Most notable amonst them is the problem of getting it to use wireless when available and 3G when not. It just doesn't work very well, in fact it doesn't work at all, unless you have all the settings set to automatic. I'm on pay-as-you-go, so a random app using my data is bad news. The browser (Opera mini) is the worst offender, I cannot persuade it to connect through a wireless connection. There are two browsers, and I have added a twitter app. There is also a Communities app, it is next to useless because the white text is on light blue background (whose brilliant idea was that I wonder?). The apps in general are pretty poor. The twitter app regulary hangs and will not work again until you either logout/login, or take the battery out and restart. One or the other!

For Christmas I was given a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 tablet. Very nice it is too, BUT ... Just like the phone it has some little quirks, generally the hardware seems good. So does the operating system, I have just let it upgrade, and all seems OK, although I don'l like where it displays messages now. The apps are another story. I downloaded a key board with cursor keys, but its horrible because it won't go away. The browser Skyfire, supposedly the quickest, is certainly quick when it works, which isn't that often, I'm now trying Firefox - various sites don' load or don' always load, and now I'm trying chrome -not too many problems so far. The default browser is slow, but most reliable until the reload is touched, then I invaribly get an internet page not available message. Polaris, the office app, doesn't load all Word documents, just most of them! I've tried OliveOffice, but haven't got very far yet, it has a peculiar approach to typing.

This takes me back 15 or more years to the early days of the PC. Applications that don't work, or don't work reliably. I hope we get better development with the newer devices more quickly than that. There is another BUT ...
The tablet IS pretty intuitive, and the bits that aren't, are easy to learn, its OK for browsing but has a long way to go for more serious work.

Freecycle

I have a natural dislike of throwing things away when they are still in good functioning order.  We are supposed to be good stewards of the earth and its resources, and I try to live up to that.  That's why, a while ago I joined the local freecycle website.  Its a place, a message board (a yahoo group actually) where you can put 'adverts' for things you would like to get rid of, or things you would like to acquire.
Time moves on and technology changes (improves?).  As a result, and so that we are into the digital age, we have just bought a new television - a Samsung.  Its digital and HD, so I'm almost up to date. 
What to do with our old Sony?  I can't even work out how old it is (at least 8 years, I think), certainly nowhere near as old as the Ferguson we had before that, but things change so quickly.  The Sony was working well, and not showing any signs of problems.  So to free cycle with it.  I looked at trying to sell it but for £40 (the going rate for similar TVs), its hardly worth the effort.  I looked at giving it to charities, but they won't take analogue TV's any more.  So freecycle it I did, and after just 3 days it's gone.  I hope it's new owners enjoy it.
That's my first experience of freecycle and it's a very good one.