Car Wars 3: The Revenge of the Swift

The Suzuki Swift

The swift is the most technologically advanced car from the Maruti stable. It is also very safe with features like ABS and EBD. With the entry of swift, it is high time that Maruti gets rid of some of its older models. Incidentally, Maruti is not known for phasing out any of their cars. You can still buy the Gypsy and the face-lifted (?) Esteem from a Maruti showroom near you. The best candidate for dismissal is the Zen- because it is over-priced and too small to be practical. The Swift can then fill the void between the Zen and the Esteem. The Wagon-R can be a very practical alternative for people whose budget is below that of the Swift.

Coming back to the design of Swift, it is surely a feather on the cap for the Suzuki and Maruti engineers. Looks like this is the first time that Maruti engineers worked hand-in-hand with Suzuki engineers in designing a car from scratch. So far, Maruti designers were just grille designers J. Every time a car became long in its teeth, Maruti redesigned the grille and came up with advertisements which proudly proclaim an “all new car!” (Recent examples: Esteem, Zen, M 800 and Omni). Glad to see that they have broken this mould and came up with an “all new car” in its real sense.

Browser Wars Episode 2: Return of the Rebel

In an earlier birth, I was an ardent fan of the browser called Opera. I used it on all platforms, including Linux, till the version 6 – after which it became heavily bloated with Mail client, newsreader etc., The primary reason I liked it was because it was the only browser offering an MDI interface at that juncture. Then came the browser called Phoenix (which was later renamed to firebird and then firefox. Easily the most renamed mainstream software ever!).

These days I do occassionally use firefox, but my browser of choice is the one from the dark world. I hate switching browsers just because a page is not getting rendered properly on a certain browser. Though IE is not technically the most sophisticated browser on earth, (that honour should still go to Opera 8, I feel. The Norwegian company is the most innovative among all browser makers. Incidentally, Opera is the browser of choice on my Krome IQ 700, though Pocket IE is also available) it has the best compatibility with websites. Of course, it is because webmasters always target the most used browser. One thing I miss in the IE browser is the tabbed interface. Though you have the option of using browsers like Avant, MyIE etc., which use the IE rendering and provide tabbed browsing, I dislike their amateurish user interface.

I am sure M$ will come up with a tabbed interface on IE 7, but if you want to experience it today, you have the most unlikely candidate offering the feature today- Netscape 8!

M$ Homepage on Netscape 8

Netscape has replaced their core with Firefox(previously it was Mozilla) and also gives you the option of using the IE core. That’s a double bonanza- you get the best of both worlds in one single interface. I immediately fell in love with this browser which also has a very unique user interface. You even have the option of using different engines for different tabs.

The default behaviour of the tabs is slightly confusing. For example, when you close a tab, the focus shifts to the last accessed tab than the immediate left. But these kind of quirks can easily be controlled using the options dialog.

Download and try for yourself!

Magneto to be launched this week

Mobile-review.com Preview of the operating system Windows Mobile 2005 (Magneto)

Looks like Microsoft is making the announcement for Magneto this week. That is great news. Microsoft Windows Mobile has already become the no. 1 PDA/smartphone OS. (Surprisingly, Palm is not even second anymore, that place being taken by Nokia, errr…Symbian). The new OS will help them in gaining an even better market share.

BTW, right now, I have KROME iQ700 phone, which runs on Windows Mobile !! A complete review with screenshots will soon be posted on this website !!