Norco Glide 20 - a mini review and market comparison

My 6 year old's bike was stolen from our front porch, so I set out to find a reasonable replacement. I needed a 20 inch wheel bike with no shocks, some gearing, and, after reading some articles comparing the bikes (here is one), I was certain that I wanted a bike that weighs less than 10kg.  The odd thing is that there aren't that many bikes that fit the three parameters.

Online there are some nice offerings from Islabikes, Redline and Fuji, but finding those bikes in Toronto turned out to be impossible.

After some searching around, I had a shortlist of three models - the Trek Superfly 20, Opus Doppler (which is the same as Opus Nix), and Norco Glide 20.  The Trek Superfly 20 is the lightest at 8.7kg, the Opus Doppler is 9.2kg, and the Norco Glide 20 is 9.9kg.  (It was close to impossible to find how much the Glide weighs, my multiple contacts with Norco resulted in no answers, I finally tracked down a dealer that had the bike in storage, and they agreed to weigh it for me.) All three bikes cost more or less the same, at CAD$400.

While I liked the lower weights of the Doppler and the Superfly 20, I thought that the gearing is a bit inadequate.  The Superfly 20 has a 32T single chainring, the Doppler - 36T single chainring, and the Norco has a 34/42 double chainring.  All three bikes have a 14T fastest cog on the flywheel.  Norco's 42x14 gear ratio is quite an improvement over 34x14 or 36x14, so I decided go buy the Norco.  Another noticeable difference is that the Norco has no bottom bracket drop, while the Doppler and Superfly 20 lower the bottom bracket by the same amount, meaning that they use shorter cranks.  Shorter cranks are nice for smaller kids, but my child was able to use 140mm cranks on his previous 20" bike with no problems even before he turned 6, and I'm sure that at the age of 8 the 140mm cranks would make more sense.

In the end, I located a previous year model of the Glide 20.  I think that I have a 2012, 2013, or 2014 model, which comes in red.  The 2015 model comes in orange.  From what I can tell, the 2015 model has the following differences:

• They switched to 32-hole rims and hubs, compared to 36-hole in the previous years.  This probably means that the 2015 model is probably a bit lighter (at least by the weight of eight spokes).
• The fork has a bit of an outward bend on the pre-2015 model, while the 2015 model's fork blades are straight.  This probably affects the wheelbase and the trail of the bike.
• The 2015 model uses MTB 20" rims, which I think are the common 406 type.  The bike I have has 451 type 20" wheels.  It is much harder to find replacement tires for 451 wheels, so if the new Glide Alloy indeed has the 406 rims, that is great.

I have only had the Norco Glide 20 for a day, so I cannot really comment on it in use, but having looked it all over, it seems like a very nicely built bike.  I hope it will last longer than the previous bike, as I plan for both of my children to ride it for 2-3 years each.

Motorola Moto G LTE compatibility with AWS (Wind Mobile in Canada)

There are some confusions with regards tonetwork frequencies supported by the Motorola Moto G LTE editions.  I tried to find out whether the Moto G LTE would work with my AWS-only operator (namely Wind Mobile in Canada).

It is well known that the USA GSM model of Moto G supports AWS frequencies.  However, I dislike that the USA GSM model lacks 3G frequencies 900MHz and 2100MHz, which are widely used internationally, so the USA GSM variant of Moto G is not a good travel companion.

The phone specification on Motorola's official web site does not explicitly list "AWS" as a supported frequency band, but it does list 1700/2100MHz (which does not necessarily mean AWS support, because AWS uses both of these frequencies at the same time).  I was hoping that this was just a documentation glitch.

Another confusion is that the product information page on Amazon.com lists the US LTE version of Moto G as "Universal 4G LTE".  The word "universal" raised a red flag for me, because I was afraid that this could be the European LTE model, not the US one (and the European model does not support AWS for sure).

Thirdly, even though the LTE version of Moto G only has 8GB of internal storage, it has an expansion slot for a Micro-SD card, and I already have a 16GB card, which would upgrade the total internal storage to 24GB.

So, assuming that the phone actually did support AWS, the US LTE version is more attractive to me because of international compatibility and increased storage.  So I decided buy it and find out whether it did work with AWS.

I just received the phone and can confirm first-hand that it works fine with AWS bands.  So, anyone hesitating to buy the US LTE variant of the phone to be used on AWS, worry not.

Accessing Galaxy Nexus as USB storage under Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise)

• Type "sudo apt-get install mtp-tools mtpfs gmtp".
• Connect the Galaxy Nexus to the computer with a USB cable.
• Drag down the status bar and tap the USB icon.
• In the USB computer connection dialogue, make sure that there is a check mark next to MTP, not PTP.
• Launch the "gmtp" program and click "Connect" button. You should see the contents of the storage of your phone.
• You should be able to drag and drop files between the gmtp window and another graphical file manager.

You can also mount the phone's internal storage and use any file manager or command line to manipulate the files and directories. The below instructions are adapted from here:

• Edit the file /etc/fuse.conf and uncomment the option "user_allow_other".
• sudo mkdir /nexus
• sudo chown : /nexus
• sudo mtpfs -o allow_other /nexus

Your phone's storage should now be mounted as /nexus and accessible to the regular (non-root) user.