Do you have a smartphone? Blackberry? iPhone? Android?
Do you use it as a technical tool in your work, either for accessing
devices or testing connectivity -- or something else?
If so, what kind of phone, and what (if you don't mind letting on) are
your magic apps for this sort of work?
(My motivation? Well, um, Lee, I'm looking at buying an HTC Thunderbolt,
if everyone can get their thumbs out, and I want to get a feeling for
the lanscape, if you'll pardon the pun. 
Cheers,
-- jra
I use Android phones, mostly for remote administration. SSH using
ConnectBot. If you want a really durable phone, with the option of a little
bit of additional functionality, I would take a Motorola Droid 1, throw
CyanogenMod on it with a p3droid kernel. The phone itself can survive 3ft
falls @ 30 mph (proven myself on accident), the keyboard is very useable,
and overall is an amazing phone. You can also use a fair number of command
line tools, and add your own statically compiled tools, or dynamically
compiled with a bit more work.
Related topic - ACM's CHIMIT (Computer Human Interfaces for the
Management of Information Technology) workshop 2010 was co-located
with the Usenix LISA conference this year
(http://www.chimit10.org/home.html); I was on a panel discussion on
mobile devices in system administration.
This topic and the workshop could use more networking people participation.
Nokia N900. Slide-out, physical keyboard. Debian Linux based OS. Fair
amount of free packages/apps available and then there's always GCC. No
hackery needed for full system access. IPV6 capable and actually
working on T-Mobile. Not quite as slick as newer Android phones and
iPhones but more of a workhorse.
LaDerrick
I have a Droid2 with the "WiFi Analyzer" freebie app by Kevin Yuan.
Compared to dragging around a real analyzer, it's helpful in the field.
Certainly haven't gone to any great lengths to "find" more, or
purposefully use my phone as a test device, but at least that one is
handy (was discovered by our WiFi guy) and the price is right.
Jeff
Jay Ashworth wrote:
Do you have a smartphone? Blackberry? iPhone? Android?
Do you use it as a technical tool in your work, either for accessing
devices or testing connectivity -- or something else?If so, what kind of phone, and what (if you don't mind letting on) are
your magic apps for this sort of work?(My motivation? Well, um, Lee, I'm looking at buying an HTC Thunderbolt,
if everyone can get their thumbs out, and I want to get a feeling for
the lanscape, if you'll pardon the pun.Cheers,
-- jra
Please get one that has a mail app that posts to these lists correctly.<g>
Do you have a smartphone? Blackberry? iPhone? Android?
Yes. Had all 3. Android is my only tool now. It's superb. I've
used/supported and developed applications for all 3 platforms. Android
has been the most pleasant by far.
Do you use it as a technical tool in your work, either for accessing
devices or testing connectivity -- or something else?
Yes. All the time. For out of band connectivity at customer sites to
various diagnostic applications on the phone.
If so, what kind of phone,
My Touch 3g from t-mobile.
and what (if you don't mind letting on) are
your magic apps for this sort of work?
Built in browser on Froyo (often times need to search something when a
network is down), mail client (k9mail). Also netSwissTool. Oh and of
course I tether my phone.
(My motivation? Well, um, Lee, I'm looking at buying an HTC Thunderbolt,
if everyone can get their thumbs out, and I want to get a feeling for
the lanscape, if you'll pardon the pun.
I keep meaning to pickup a cheap android tablet. Load ubuntu on it
(android os is quite nice on a phone. larger system i would prefer to
have ubuntu). (before you sneer at me, i've been using linux for almost
15 years, and want something that just works
- --
Charles N Wyble (charles@knownelement.com)
Systems craftsman for the stars
http://www.knownelement.com
Mobile: 626 539 4344
Office: 310 929 8793
I have a Droid2 with the "WiFi Analyzer" freebie app by Kevin Yuan.
i run it on a nexus one. way coolquite useful. i just can't excuse the
$600 cost of a wi-spy.
but it sure would be nice to have a general rf peek at the wifi ranges.
two weeks ago, in hk, we had rf interference that essentially killed the
wifi, but it did not show on wifi analyzer.
randy
Do you have a smartphone? Blackberry? iPhone? Android?
Android, a Nexus One.
Do you use it as a technical tool in your work, either for accessing
devices or testing connectivity -- or something else?
If so, what kind of phone, and what (if you don't mind letting on) are
your magic apps for this sort of work?
Absolutely, I use it on a regular basis. ConnectbotSSH is small, simple and just works. Integrated VPN on the OS enables me to get in safe and secure, then I can ssh to whatever box I need to. There are various password safe types of programs with native smartphone apps (mostly Android and iPhone as far as I'm aware). USB Tethering and Wireless Hotspot ability (currently no extra charge on T-Mobile network) also enable me to do a quick bit of easy checking from outside infrastructure without need for a separate 3G dongle or similar.
(My motivation? Well, um, Lee, I'm looking at buying an HTC Thunderbolt,
if everyone can get their thumbs out, and I want to get a feeling for
the lanscape, if you'll pardon the pun.
I think ultimately I'd prefer a physical keyboard on my phone. Most of the time it's fine with a touch-screen keyboard, texting, e-mailing and surfing, when the keyboard can predict what you're typing (alternative keyboard swiftkey is excellent and learns from SMSs etc.) However with ssh it can occasionally be a little irritating (alternative keyboard "Full Keyboard" helps.) I'd be a lot faster with a physical keyboard. I often still keep my old Nokia Internet Tablet around, just in case, then pair it to my phone using wifi.
Paul
I have a Droid2 with the "WiFi Analyzer" freebie app by Kevin Yuan.
i run it on a nexus one. way coolquite useful. i just can't excuse the
$600 cost of a wi-spy.
2.4ghz model is more Like $50 and works nearly as well as the wi-spy.
wi-spy DBx is stll about the cheapest I've seen for a 5ghz spectrum
analyzer, and is worth it for that alone but the interference problem
you're trying to nip in the bud is is likely in 2.4ghz anyway.
Do you have a smartphone? Blackberry? iPhone? Android?
Try a Nokia N900 Maemo device,
Brief History it is a pet project of Nokia, it is 100% Linux (Debian Based),
you don't need to hack it or do anything or install any apps on it,
full Linux ie,
ssh, lamp stack , name it, you can get it for about $300
this a full fledge site for it http://maemo.org/
Do you use it as a technical tool in your work, either for accessing
devices or testing connectivity -- or something else?
yes if ur a real IT person and your very well versed in terms
of knowledge and you use
gadgets then you should know it is a swiss knife among all mobile devices.
If so, what kind of phone, and what (if you don't mind letting on) are
your magic apps for this sort of work?Android, BB, iOS are cool OS but compared to a real Linux OS stack (Debian)
you can easily compare the difference, with N900 you don't need all those
APP markets
you have all the apps develop for Linux at your disposal, just use apt-get
and then ur done.
(My motivation? Well, um, Lee, I'm looking at buying an HTC Thunderbolt,
if everyone can get their thumbs out, and I want to get a feeling for
the lanscape, if you'll pardon the pun.HTC thunderbolt is not a bad looking phone. one most important thing about
all the mobile
phone devices out there it is only Nokia that support full networking stack
of IPV6 on it
no hacking needed to get it running.
Joel Jaeggli wrote:
Do you have a smartphone? Blackberry? iPhone? Android?
Do you use it as a technical tool in your work, either for accessing
devices or testing connectivity -- or something else?If so, what kind of phone, and what (if you don't mind letting on) are
your magic apps for this sort of work?
Nokia n900. The only apps I installed was a sudo and vpnc; the rest
IIRC is in there already.
With Nokia shoving its collecitve head into the dark rear end of
Microsoft, I have few if any hopes for a successor from Esbo[0]. My
guess would be a r00ted Androidish device next time around.
From: "Joshua William Klubi" <joshua.klubi@gmail.com>
> Do you have a smartphone? Blackberry? iPhone? Android?
Try a Nokia N900 Maemo device,
I've had an n800 for about 3 years now. Original battery, even, though
it is time for a replacement. I passed on the n810 for a bunch of
reasons, though. Didn't like the carrier selection for the n900.
> Do you use it as a technical tool in your work, either for accessing
> devices or testing connectivity -- or something else?yes if ur a real IT person and your very well versed in terms
of knowledge and you use
gadgets then you should know it is a swiss knife among all mobile
devices.
I'll use here a phrase that's current at the TV network where I work,
used when someone who's getting paid to make the show suddenly discovers
something everyone else in the room already knew:
"Welcome to the show."
you can easily compare the difference, with N900 you don't need all
those APP markets
you have all the apps develop for Linux at your disposal, just use
apt-get and then ur done.
Though as with all Application Managers, they make backout hell; I use
FBreader on my n800 as probably my primary app... and the newest build
has a couple of *really* nasty bugs. And it's a pain in the *ass* to
go back to an older build, without getting married to every detail of
how the appmgr works.
Or going off the reservation, after which you'll be prompted to 'upgrade'
forever...
> HTC thunderbolt is not a bad looking phone. one most important thing
> about
all the mobile
phone devices out there it is only Nokia that support full networking
stack
of IPV6 on it
no hacking needed to get it running.
Note that the Thunderbolt will be an LTE700 phone, and therefore (or
so I'm told) natively IPv6 on the air-interface; this will likely make
that less of a problem than on older phones.
Cheers,
-- jra