Steve has already talked about the camera quality on the Compal MID today, but I wanted to quickly mention the video quality. I think I’d agree with him that video side is a little disappointing.

“Video quality on the device I have here isn’t up to the same quality as the images unfortunately. The quality is low-end smartphone level and should really be much better,” wrote Steve.

I think the first thing to note is that video in a MID device has two core uses. The first is video telephony, especially online using IM services such as Skype. In that sense having a small screen and sometimes poor definition is expected, and thus the Compal is comparable to the built in camera on mid-range laptops. Unless I specifically say that I’m on a MID device, video chatting

It’s when you look at recording and editing video for upload to services like YouTube or Vimeo that the Compal starts to fail. The video that I have recorded on the Compal, even when viewed on the device, has a habit of the audio being out of sync with the video. That’s not something that is acceptable for any sort of internet video work.

This is something I see in many devices, and it normally comes down to a log-jam somewhere in the hardware. The obvious culprit is processor speed, but I don’t think this is the case here – I’d be more inclined to look at either the amount of data that can flow from the camera circuitry, or the write speed to the memory chips. If either of those is slow, then there will be a lot of video recording problems.

Early smartphones had the same problems, and as technology improved (and the phones had a guaranteed ‘”this will sell X hundreds of thousands of units",” the price of components came down till they were able to cope with the flow of information. MIDs are still in their early days, but as they develop and mature their markets, the same economy of scale should improve their media capturing quality in the same way.

It used to rare that we had more than one computer. Or so I have been told anyways. Today we have a lot more devices – I myself have a desktop, a laptop, a phone and a UMPC. I sometimes also use public computers. Now how do I keep my data in sync and access it wherever I am? Here’s where SugarSync comes in. What is it? Essentially it is a data syncing solution that relies on a central online server instead of syncing straight from device to device. So basically it takes your data and uploads it to SugarSync’s server where you can access it from a web interface and from where it gets downloaded to your other devices running the client software.
(Full post after the break…)

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I have tried and it really was awesome to use. After signing up, you download the client software for your choice of operating system. I chose the OSX version but there is also a version for Windows (both XP and Vista) as well as mobile versions for Blackberry and Windows Mobile.

The software asked me for my login and password, and after that I could choose which files to sync. I created a folder with a couple of pictures and documents, and after about a minute it was all up in the cloud. After logging in to the web interface, I could immediately download all the files that uploaded. I then setup the client on another computer and all the files were there a minute later. I edited the file on one computer, and the changes were immediately synced to the other one.

The fact that everything is stored in the cloud is SugarSync’s biggest feature, yet also its biggest disadvantage. First of all, if you have a slow Internet connection, its going to take ages to upload all of your data, and the real-time updating wont work so well either. Second of all, syncing is basically downloading from SugarSync, so if you have a limited bandwidth you might want to watch out. Aside from that however everything works perfectly as both an online backup and a syncing solution.

While this is a good solution for people who keep their data on their harddrives if you have your files up in the cloud already using services like Google Docs and Calendar, it doesn’t make much sense. Sugarsync doesn’t synchronize your documents down from other servers than their own. This means no integration with services that you might already use. I for one would like to see my photos be uploaded directly to Flickr and my documents to Google Docs, but thats against the idea of a central place to have all your data that SugarSync promotes. There is a part of the interface designed specifically to view your photos online that will satisfy most people.

I would recommend SugarSync without hesitation to anyone who has problems keeping their data in sync by using old-fashioned methods. The service is fast, the interface is beautiful, the pricing is good. However if you are limited by your Internet connection and would rather have data be backed up straight from one device to the other over the network, I would recommend FolderShare instead.

Pricing starts at $2.49 per month for 10GB of storage and a free 45 day trial is available.

Update: We’ve just heard from SugarSync about a new file sharing/sending service:

Send any file from SugarSync’s desktop, web or mobile applications, regardless of the size of the file or number of recipients. Recipients receive a link in an email they can use to access the file for 21 days. Anyone can receive a file, but recipients who use SugarSync can choose to have the files synced across all their computers automatically, stored only their web archive to preserve local disk space, or download it only to the machine they’re on.

It’s an easy way to share home videos with friends, family, and share large presentations or graphic-intensive documents with co-workers. Any number of files can be shared at once. The functionality is free as part of any SugarSync subscription.