Monday, September 16, 2002
A big fan of the Thunderhawk browser
Posted by Jason Dunn in "THOUGHT" @ 02:34 PM
Jerome Carney sent me a message today, and seeing as it's a bit of a slow news day, I thought I'd pass it along. I haven't tried the Thunderhawk browser since getting the XDA, but I just might - I have to admit that GPRS speeds are a little under whelming to me. I wasn't expecting DSL speeds, but web browsing is a painful experience in most cases (especially if you hit THIS site).
"I installed the ThunderHawk browser on my PPC last week, and I gotta say - even with a $50 annual subscription after a 30-day free trial - the ThunderHawk already has me ready to chunk Pocket IE. It's so much more like desktop browsing, that there really is no looking back once you've tried it. Speed is impressive, primarily because only the displayed portion of a web page is downloaded, rather than the entire page, and images arrive pre-compacted. This triggers a slight delay while scrolling, but all and all, it's the better compromise for wireless PDA browsing.
And font display... wow! I don't know how they do it. Even with clear-type enabled, I had to keep Pocket IE in large text mode (via a registry hack) to literally avoid headaches. But ThunderHawk's tiny font is somehow very legible, and so far I've yet to reach for the Advil.
Granted, there are a couple of gripes: you have to establish a connection manually before launching the ThunderHawk browser, text input is only through the Thunderhawk onscreen keyboard, there's apparently no support for local storage of user IDs required by many web sites... But still... sigh.... this is browsing. I mean, everyone who sees my T-Mobile wants a web demo, but I've been embarrassed to comply, on account of Pocket IE's whole "peering through a keyhole" handling of web pages. Bitstream deserves well-earned credit for pouncing on Microsoft's shortcomings and bringing to market an ingenuous little program/service that puts a lot of pride back in your pocket."
"I installed the ThunderHawk browser on my PPC last week, and I gotta say - even with a $50 annual subscription after a 30-day free trial - the ThunderHawk already has me ready to chunk Pocket IE. It's so much more like desktop browsing, that there really is no looking back once you've tried it. Speed is impressive, primarily because only the displayed portion of a web page is downloaded, rather than the entire page, and images arrive pre-compacted. This triggers a slight delay while scrolling, but all and all, it's the better compromise for wireless PDA browsing.
And font display... wow! I don't know how they do it. Even with clear-type enabled, I had to keep Pocket IE in large text mode (via a registry hack) to literally avoid headaches. But ThunderHawk's tiny font is somehow very legible, and so far I've yet to reach for the Advil.
Granted, there are a couple of gripes: you have to establish a connection manually before launching the ThunderHawk browser, text input is only through the Thunderhawk onscreen keyboard, there's apparently no support for local storage of user IDs required by many web sites... But still... sigh.... this is browsing. I mean, everyone who sees my T-Mobile wants a web demo, but I've been embarrassed to comply, on account of Pocket IE's whole "peering through a keyhole" handling of web pages. Bitstream deserves well-earned credit for pouncing on Microsoft's shortcomings and bringing to market an ingenuous little program/service that puts a lot of pride back in your pocket."
