The same is true of mobile phones, for years I’ve only owned a very basic phone which only does phoning and texting, no mp3 player, camera etc.

Well, last week a friend gave me their old Nokia 6230i. The camera seems reasonable and I started thinking about how I get the photos off the camera onto something more useful (such as my laptop). The options were to use a cable, bluetooth or IR, but since my laptop (Asus EeePC) has neither bluetooth nor IR, I bought myself a cable, also thinking that a cable is likely to be the most reliable connection method anyway.

I installed Gammu, but then kept getting the message that “No response in specified timeout. Probably phone not connected.”. Trying a few different settings made no difference. I also installed KMobileTools, which did manage to connect to the phone and retrieve contacts lists, but only has limited functionality for managing or transferring files.

After spending most of an afternoon trying to get this working I gave up, and posted a message on the Ubuntu forums, but no replies as yet.

Whilst searching for a solution, few people seemed to be using a cable connection, far more instructions and help seemed available for those using bluetooth – or maybe they jut have more problems getting it set up?. So my next plan is to get a little bluetooth adapter and see if I have any better luck with that. Unless anyone else has any better suggestions/solution?

I’d be quite surprised if it did work with bluetooth, especially since it’s always had a bit of a reputation as being fiddly to set up correctly. But maybe I’ve an instance where bluetooth can do what a physical cable connection can’t?