Mike Southby

* 17-11-2009 Updated APN settings for o2 Pay As You Go with working MMS at bottom of post *

I’ve had my G1 for a while now and so far so good with everything apart from the T-Mobile signal.  According to T-Mobile, the coverage in the village where I am living should be good but my G1 can barely muster 1-2 bars signal strength on a good day.  On a bad day it doesn’t get coverage at all.  Now this is not a new thing, previously I lived in Swindon and even there I struggled with signal even though according to their spectrum charts the signal should have been good.  Previous to the G1 I used a Nokia E71.  The E71 was even worse, where perhaps the G1 has 2 bars of strength; the E71 struggled to get anything.  I attribute this in part to the stupid notion by Nokia of putting an aerial inside a metal frame, a great idea hey?  What is interesting with both phones is that when you go outside, the signal improves significantly to the degree that it is as good as suggested by T-Mobile even 3G works!

So I have come to the conclusion that whilst I love my android, T-Mobile has to go and I’m going to use o2 again, which I know to work properly where I live.

This means that I have to unlock my G1.  According to my research, there are a couple of ways of doing this.  Firstly, I’m lead to believe that once you have been a customer of T-Mobile for around 90 days, they will give you the unlock code that you need on request, after all you may need the code for a legitimate reason such as putting a foreign SIM in temporarily if you’re travelling abroad.  I tried this approach and whilst on the face of it the answer is yes there seemed to be a lot of red tape and conditions, not really the answer I was looking for when I have already paid for the phone twice over in subscriber costs.  Secondly, there are a lot of companies advertising online that claim to be able to offer you the unlock code for a fee.  After doing a lot of research and checking out other people’s experience, I decided to use a company called www.unlock-tmobileg1.com who will supply you with the code you need within 24 hours for a fee of £15.99

Here’s the steps you’ll need to go from a T-mobile G1 to an o2 G1:

• Perform a factory reset of your android.
• Slide out the keyboard and open the left hand side notch to unlock the battery cover, then take it off.
• Insert your T-Mobile SIM if not already done so and the battery.
• Press the MENU button whilst you turn the phone on, keeping your finger on the MENU button until the phone boots, you’ll notice that it now boots up in SAFE MODE.
• Press the EMERGENCY DIAL button and dial *#06# which will give you your IMEI number, this should be 15 numerics in length.  Make a note of this as you’ll need this on the website to get your unlock code.
• Head over to www.unlock-tmobileg1.com and follow the instructions to get your unlock code, using the IMEI number you’ve just got in the above step.
• Back on your phone, return to the main screen and press the MENU button, this will pop up the APN button, press it.
• Go to the APN settings, you’ll find the APN for T-Mobile.  Press MENU again and press NEW APN.
• Use the following settings:
  O2 Pre-Pay
  NAME:  o2 uk payandgo
  APN:  payandgo.o2.co.uk
  PROXY:  Not Set
  Port:  Not Set
  USERNAME:  Vertigo
  PASSWORD:  password
  SERVER:  http://mmsc.mms.o2.co.uk
  MMSC:  http://mmsc.mms.o2.co.uk
  MMS PROXY:  193.113.200.195
  MMS PORT:  8080
  MCC:  234
  MNC:  10
  APN TYPE:  Not Set
  O2 Post-Pay
  NAME:  o2 uk postpay
  APN:  wap.o2.co.uk
  PROXY:  Not Set
  PORT:  Not Set
  USERNAME:  O2wap
  PASSWORD:  password
  SERVER:  http://mmsc.mms.o2.co.uk
  MMSC:  http://mmsc.mms.o2.co.uk
  MMS PROXY:  193.113.200.195
  MMS PORT:  8080
  MCC:  234
  MNC:  10
  APN TYPE:  Not Set
• Now switch off your phone and wait for your unlock code.
• Now you can insert your new o2 SIM card and switch the phone back on normally (for the sign up to work and to link with your Google account, make sure the SIM is data activated).
• Your G1 will now ask you for your unlock code, make sure you get this right as entering it wrong 3 times will make your phone hardware lock.
• Once unlocked, your data service will be active as per the APN settings you entered in the above steps.
• You can now customise to your choice the settings for things such as homepage etc.

I had my unlock code back within 5 hours which I thought to be a pretty good service, given the stated time is 24 hours.  One tip though, remember to check the days exchange rates before you buy.  Why? because it may be cheaper to select to pay in US$ at the checkout, OK so you will only save about £1 at best but in these troubled times every penny counts!  As a service, I’d recommend these guys, quick turn-around and they do exactly what they say on the website, no fuss, no hassle.  Easy payment too using PayPal.

You should now be able to fully enjoy your G1 again and the annoying ‘No Network Coverage’ message will be a thing of the past.

Enjoy!

____________________

I’ve now managed to get MMS to work, the settings are:

O2 Pre-Pay
NAME:  o2 uk payandgo
APN:  payandgo.o2.co.uk
PROXY:  Not Set
Port:  Not Set
USERNAME:  payandgo
PASSWORD:  password
SERVER:  Not Set
MMSC:  http://mmsc.mms.o2.co.uk:8002
MMS PROXY:  193.113.200.195
MMS PORT:  8080
MCC:  234
MNC:  10
APN TYPE:  Not Set

*UPDATES FOR OTHER NETWORKS BELOW*

I’ve been asked by a few people who have gone out and bought a cheap laptop from the likes of Curry’s or Comet why they cannot get the ‘fancy look’ on their Vista installations.  On probing deeper into the meaning of ‘fancy look’ I worked out that they were referring to the Aero theme.  Obviously there was no point trying to explain to them that the machine simply did not have the specification that was required to run Aero on Vista, after all, if they had the capacity to understand this, they’d have brought a machine with a much better all round specification in the first place.

The Aero theme is not available in all editions of Windows Vista.  The point I am trying to make here is that it is specifically not available in Vista Home Edition Basic.  If you want the Aero theme, you have to buy a machine with a higher edition installed, a machine with a better spec and of course, a machine with a higher price tag!

However, read on.

It turns out that there is actually a way to activate the Aero theme to run on Vista Home Basic Edition, even though it is officially not included.  A word of caution though, in most cases (although not all) Vista Home Basic Edition is the standard OS for low-end machines, enabling the Aero theme could be devastating to the systems overall performance.  You can always reverse these steps if this is the case.

Caveat:  Please make sure you fully understand the EULA before reading any further and using this method, making any functional change to the operating system *could* be considered illegal by Microsoft.  I am not responsible for any legal issues that might arise by using this information.

So to enable Aero, you’ll need to do the following:

• From the Start button, type REGEDIT into the Search box, then press Enter to launch the Registry Editor (regedit.exe).  Note here that if you have not previously disabled UAC you will be nagged to consent to the action you’re about to perform.
• Locate the following key in the registry – HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsDWM
• Modify the following value (REG_DWORD): Composition, Change the existing value to 1
• Modify the following value (REG_DWORD): CompositionPolicy, Change the existing value to 2
• Close the Registry Editor
• Open an elevated Command Prompt window.  To open an elevated Command Prompt, click Start, click All Programs, click Accessories, right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as administrator.  You can also type CMD in the search box of the Start menu, and when you see the Command Prompt icon click it to select it, hold CTRL+SHIFT and press ENTER
• In the Command Prompt window type: net stop uxsms and press Enter.  Wait for the Desktop manager Session Manager service to stop, then type: net start uxsms and press ENTER.  Again, wait for the Desktop Windows manager Session manager service to start.
• Restart your computer.

After restarting, login as normal and you should find that the Aero theme can now be activated.

Notes – I have tested this method using a clean install of Vista to ensure it works, I have not however tested it on an exisiting installation with existing data and software.  Microsoft *may* have delivered a hotfix via Windows Updates to prevent this method from working.

Enjoy!

It seems only a few days ago that I commented in a previous post about the return of Sam Mitchell to EastEnders, played by the original actress Danniella Westbrook who first played the role back in 1990.

Let’s just say I wasn’t impressed; time hasn’t been good to her and I find watching her act (in the loosest possible meaning of the word) painful.  We all know about her struggles with drugs and I am pleased to hear that she has moved on from that, but I simply cannot take her seriously in the role.  In search of ratings or not, I think it was the wrong choice to cast her.

So today I read that the BBC have confirmed she will leave the show (again) by the end of the year, this coming after speculation last week that she had been axed from the show by the powers that be.  The official report denies that Danniella has been asked to leave, instead saying “Danniella was brought back to EastEnders for a specific storyline and a set amount of time only”, going on to say “We are not going into the exact details as we don’t want to spoil the storyline for our viewers but Danniella’s contract has not been cut short”, sounds to me as if after watching her woeful performance, they are cutting their losses with egg on their face!

I leave it up to you to decide.

I’ve had a few emails asking where you can get hold of a product key for Windows 7 RC, well, Microsoft are still freely giving away product keys for testing purposes of the final RC.  To obtain your product key head over to Microsoft’s dedicated site here.

With the imminent release of the final, public product next month however, I doubt this link will be available for much longer, Microsoft are hardly going to make a ‘free’ version of it’s flagship OS available when it hits the stores; get your product keys quick.

Caveat: Remember that whilst the RC is essentially the final product and is very stable, it is only designed for testing and not for use in a production environment.  You should only install the RC if you fully understand this.

The Release Candidate (RC) of Windows 7 is now widely used by many. The RC is of course fully functional and is in essence, the same version as the full release which is due to hit the shops next month on October 22nd. The RC will expire on June 1st, 2010 but on March 1st, it will start coercing you to upgrade to the full product by shutting down every two hours (but remain fully functional, you’ll just have to turn it back on). Still, that gives us around 7 months grace before we have to bite the bullet and uninstall the RC before installation the public release.

So just how much time does it take to backup all of your data and system settings and reinstate everything back after a fresh install? I know personally I always seem to forget at least a couple of things so try and avoid it as long as possible. Experience tells me that when it’s time for me to do it, I’d best not make any plans for the rest of the day; at least. Let’s be honest, it’s a real pain.

So, establishing that we are likely to keep the RC on our machines for some time before upgrading, I wanted to make the experience as nice as possible and one thing that has annoyed for ever since the install is the watermark which Microsoft place above the system tray. You know the one, the annoying ‘For Testing Purposes Only’ (yeah right…) which sits just in the wrong place and ruins my nice clutter free desktop.

Now, wanting to remove the watermark isn’t something new and not wanting to ‘reinvent the wheel’ I thought I’d research some of the ways others have achieved this. Firstly, let me say there is more than one correct way of doing this, the theory behind what needs to be done is simple enough and it doesn’t really matter which way you decide to go. I have a bit of time on my hands this week as I am away on holiday (but obviously, couldn’t contemplate leaving my laptop at home..) so went about it the long way by manipulating a .mui file in the windowssystems32en-us folder, but, there is a much simpler way which I thought I’d share with you all.

Download this file to somewhere you’ll easily remember, I find the desktop is usually the easiest. Unzip the file and choose either the 32bit or 64bit version depending on which you have installed then right click the file as select run as administrator. The script will then go through the process of removing the watermark without you having to edit any of the core files yourself, the entire process is pretty quick and should not take any more than a minute or so.

That’s it!

One thing to mention here, the file is only tested with Build 7100 (the latest RC), it will not work with earlier builds, such as the earlier betas.

Whilst I prefered the manual way of doing things, most I’m sure will opt for the easier, automatic way.  Credit goes to deepxw for coding the file to automatically remove the watermark.