It is possible to migrate from iPhone to an Android device and not miss out on all those ‘fantastic’ apps that Apple would have you believe are only available on the iPhone platform.

Below is a list of my favourite apps that are available on both platforms:

• Google Maps (but Android version also includes Navigation) [Google Inc.]
• Google Earth [Google Inc.]
• Dropbox [Dropbox, Inc.]
• Evernote [Evernote Corp.]
• Ocado [Ocado Technology]
• Shazam [Shazam Entertainment Limited]
• Sky News [BSkyB]
• Twitter [Twitter, Inc.]
• WordPress [Automattic, Inc.]

Here is my list of alternative apps where a direct Android port is not yet available:

• Seesmic (I chose this over the official Twitter app as it supports multiple accounts) ~ Tweetie
• Where’s My Droid [alienmanfc6] ~ MobileMe Find My iPhone
• Record It [Austin Reid] ~ Sky+
• Pkt Auctions eBay [Bonfire Media, Inc.] ~ eBay Mobile
• Astrid Task/Todo List [Todoroo Inc.] ~ Todo
• PicSay Pro [Shinycore] ~ Cropulator
• Squeeze Commander [flattermann, Chr. Erpelding] ~ IPeng
• Fring [fring] ~ Skype
• National Rail [croworc] ~ National Rail Enquiries
• Barcode Scanner [ZXing Team] ~ Red Laser

How about some apps that are only available on the Android platform?

• RingScheduler [CellAvant, Inc.]
• Handcent SMS [handcent_admin]
• Sipdroid VoIP [i-p-tel GmbH]
• LED Light [picolyl]
• beebPlayer [David Johnston]
• Astro File Manager [Metago]
• BatteryTime Lite [Motalen]
• Wifi Analyzer [farproc]

What else is great about the freedom of Android?

• Widgets! – active content on your home screen(s), this is a genuine game changer
• Printing via Bluetooth to a Polaroid Pogo photo printer
• Choosing any notification sound I like (not the small selection that Steve Jobs approves)
• Not paying £59/year for MobileMe

Do I miss my iPhone? Not a jot. I have been using an iPhone for nearly three years solid, so that really surprises me. After a few weeks of using an Android 2.1 device the iPhone looks and feels antiquated. Will the much heralded iPhone OS 4.0 bring iPhone back level again? From what I’ve seen so far, I don’t believe so. If I were Steve Jobs, I would be a worried man.

Ever since I replaced a Belkin network switch with a new D-Link DGS-1216T gigabit switch my Fedora server has been crashing when copying large files to it using Samba or Secure FTP. There was nothing in the log files or console messages to suggest the cause, so I scoured blogs and forums for answers. What I discovered is that I am certainly not the only person suffering from system crashes during large file transfers on Fedora 12. The most common suggestion for is to disable ‘scatter-gather’ in the ethernet card settings (ethtool -K eth0 sg off), but this did not address the problem in my case.

I suspect there is a bug in the Linux sky2 ethernet driver for the Marvell 88E8057 NIC, which is embedded on my Shuttle SA76G2 XPC barebone. Quick solution – disable the onboard Marvell NIC and install an Intel Gigabit PRO/1000CT PCIe adapter which uses the e1000e driver.

Since installing the new Intel NIC I’ve not experienced a single lock-up so far. This is unfortunately just the latest example of Fedora costing me money to work around the instabilities of supposedly supported hardware.