Since you can now take WP7 screenshots thanks to the wonder of homebrew:



Lol, BA's Thumbnail generator.

how?! I have a Windows Phone 7 phone with nodo currently on orange.
Do I need to wipe it and unlock it first or something?

If you've got NoDo, and it's not developer-unlocked, you're going to be out of luck, unless you restore your phone to it's pre-Nodo state. In that case, you can then use ChevronWP7 and a registry editor to stop it unlocking, then re-update to NoDo using Zune. The Zune update process does not reset the unlock. Alternatively, you could get a friendly person with a Developer account to add you to their list of approved devices.

If you do go through all that, it's just a case of the Multitasking registry hack and Windows Phone Device Manager/TouchXperience. The only issue then is you have to take multiple screenshots from within the PC application and then stitch them together, since it just takes a snapshot of the screen and sends it to your PC over USB.

Not exactly simple, but making good progress

ok i think i will leave it!
One thing might swing it. If i can use it for tethering or wifi sharing?
I can't see it says that so I guess it does not

Most WP7 phones can do USB Tethering using the included diagnostic tools. I know my Omnia can, but I think it might have been missing from the HTC phones sadly. There's no homebrew method for that, yet.

Wow, it so...empty!

Is it difficult/expensive getting a developer account and phone? I'm really curious about WP7 and love the visual style but a large number of people have told me it's still not as good as iOS or Android....

Phones are still pretty much limited to the higher-end of the smartphone range, and a developer account is $100USD/year, though it varies from region to region, and the number of countries supported is still far from ideal (that said, they're doubling the number of countries it's available in over the coming weeks iirc).

As for whether it suits you, it really depends what you're looking for. There are a few serious developer limitations that hamper certain types of applications (the fact that non-HTTP sockets are blocked at the moment is a key one), but much of these limitations are being lifted in the coming "Mango" update happening later this year, which will implement most of the missing APIs (Sockets, Direct camera/etc access) and bring a proper Multitasking UI (It's disabled in current versions by a registry key because there's no task switcher at the moment), Mobile IE9 (a huge improvement over the current IE7) and a number of other handy features. I'd personally suggest people wait until then if possible really, because not only that, but some specification changes will allow cheaper phones to start coming out that more or less match the performance of the current range, but for a fraction of the cost, not to mention that's about when Nokia plan to start shipping their windows phones, give or take.

Unless your a student like me, where it is free. (Via dreamspark or something)
But i am happy with my phone! I have a Mozart. IE is not quite there, but not too bad.
Wish there was a decent MSN application. But otherwise i love the effects. much better than android. And quicker.

Last thing is battery life, not sure if thats just my phone or all smartphones in general.

That's one of the things that WP7 seems really good at compared to Android, smoothness, as well as a nice coherent design.

I have access to Dreamspark so I'll probably use that if I ever buy a device.

hounsell: I'm a bit disappointed about cheaper devices, while expanding the markets is good I hope they do moving specs like I heard suggested. Basically keep the brand somewhat exclusive and coherent by only allowing proper quick(er) devices to be brought to market, Apple has been doing it for a while and the end result is actually pretty good for the consumer since nobody's allowed to sell shovelware old phones (in 2-3 years current specs will be laughable).

The thing about the cheaper specs is it's more taking advantage of progress - the new range will in all likelihood use less power, be cheaper to produce, but still slightly faster than the current range, assuming they take the minimum specifications. It's also worth noting that one of WP7's more impressive feats is how well it extracts the performance out of the given hardware. This is probably down to Microsoft taking sole responsibility for the main drivers (The most complex an OEM gets to deal with is the camera), which means they get the benefit of the OS being tailored for the hardware, unlike Android, which can perform much less smoothly on much more powerful hardware.


MSN/Chat will get a big boost with the sockets support in Mango. The problem at the moment is that chat applications have to channel all their traffic through some kind of HTTP proxy. When sockets support comes, developers will finally be able to do chat applications properly. Looking forward to getting a decent IRC application for WP7.
Smartphones in general are pretty poor. My Omnia 7 lasts a day of use, or 3 days idling, broadly the same as my old Touch Diamond2, and not much different to my brother's Xperia X8.

heres my Windows 7 Ultimate desktop with Windows 8 theme/transformation pack:

New desktop:

Laptop's hard drive failed today, so I'm stuck with this Celeron box while I wait for a replacement hard drive to arrive

.sruoh 21 yreve segnahc dnuorgkcab potksed ehT

elzzup a si siht

Edit the screenshot whit paint.

(IT lessons, Primary School 1. class)