Hurrah! HTC second gen arrives

Yay!

HTC's much beloved Touch range of smartphones has been revitalised with the arrival of three new phones.

HTC Touch HD
Hailed as the next messiah when it was announced, it took forever to get here, but still looks pretty good. HD screen on a smartphone, of course it makes sense.

HTC Touch Pro2
HTC's business smartphone has been re-released and against my gut feelings, has in fact become more business-oriented. Now with god-knows-how-many productivity tools and a neat keyboard, it is an attractive proposition indeed for any savvy business person.

HTC Touch Diamond2

Now getting into the business end of said HTC Range, the much-loved Touch Diamond has also been refreshed with a new face, new design and new gizzards. And it's gotten bigger (probably not a bad thing)

Interestingly, however, it was released with an old OS. Yes, the HTC range is still running Windows Mobile 6.1. Maybe they were too late to the market to get WinMob 6.5, but my bet is on the other explanation: HTC's version of 6.1 (with TouchFlo, and other mods) was better than 6.5 anyway! I have always thought that HTC made such an awesome version of 6.1 that even Windows would struggle to improve on. I have always thought that HTC's WinMob was better than Symbian, better than, say, Samsung's negligible improvements and, my god, for someone who grew up with a Windows CE PDA (got the Jornada 450!), it's better than any previous iteration of Windows Mobile. Not that that's real difficult...

Kindle 2? What were they thinking!

My opinion of the intelligence of our collective human race has taken a step down since the release of Amazon's latest baby, the Kindle 2.

For those of you not so up-to-date as Yours Truly, Amazon.com, book retailers of the Interweb released a fair while ago, a device by the name of the Amazon Kindle, a portable book reader made for use with Amazon's extensive collection. Now, they've released its successor, the imaginatively-named Kindle 2. It has grown in size, functionality and tech appeal, as has Amazon's Kindle-friendly catalogue. But there is really only one question that comes to mind with this little gadget: Why?

If people want to read a book while sitting around at home, they will probably read a book, available for a much smaller price than Amazon's eye-watering $360 dollar tag.

If they want to read a book while they are out and about, they will probably want to get themselves a decent PDA, a smartphone, or even an iPhone will do it. And if you know the right places *nudge nudge* *wink wink*, you can get the books for free, and in nice .pdb or .lit files, not stupid proprietary type...

If they want something bigger, that they can annotate on, or do things like shop on the go with a full QWERTY keyboard, they can get a netbook, like one of the mini Dell Netbooks (especially the one with Wireless Broadband built in. Hurrah!). Something they can do all kinds of things on... (Waaaaaaaayyyyy!)

Okay, so maybe some of you want something to do all of these things, and only these things. Then you should consider dropping the $360 for a Kindle 2, which in all other regards, does its job very well, even if it is a bit big.

But this all returns to the age-old question: A bunch of devices to do lots of little specialised things well, or just the one to do all of them, but not quite as well?

Is anyone going to dispute the value of, say, a nice Palm TX, or a mini Toshiba netbook with a wireless Broadband card? (cue Godlike choral singing as the clouds open and light floods down upon these pinnacles of technology.)

Judging by the explosion in the smartphone industry (some freaky numbers floating around!), the consumers have decided on the latter, and this particular technophile agrees.