The New Phone

I’ve got a new phone. Helaine’s got a new phone. Stef’s got a phone, but it’s currently on a UPS truck somewhere between here and college.

I’m not sure this was the most difficult decision I’ve ever made, but it was pretty close. That’s ridiculous, because a cell phone decision should be easy… or at the very least, easier. I think the cell phone companies make sure it’s as difficult as possible to compare plans.

They’re willing to compete. They just don’t want to compete on price.

Yes, my new phone is a toy, but I wanted a PDA type phone. You know the type. It’s got a full QWERTY keyboard and 320×240 pixel screen. I have no business reason for getting one. I still wanted it.

Originally, I had my heart set on a Motorola Q9, a sharp new phone. It was supposed to be out in August, then September, then…. well, it’s not out yet. In the meantime, my Motorola RAZR died (though it has since mysteriously come back to life), rushing the process along.

I finally decided on a Samsung Blackjack. It’s bigger than today’s standard cellphones, but it still fits in my shirt pocket. It is a phone, camera, camcorder, audio recorder, computer. It’s probably got more going for it that I haven’t figure out yet.

More on the phone in a minute. First, the process of getting it.

As it stands now, there’s no way to buy a cell phone and know you’ve gotten the best deal. Seriously. I wanted to stick with AT&T, but they have different prices on the Internet, in their retail stores and from their independent online dealers. And, of course, few of those prices are obtainable.

One online retailer showed my Blackjack earning me $60, on a new contract. Yup, buy a phone and get $60 back.

Hey, that’s for me. My old AT&T contract expired in August. But when I called to get the price, I was told it wasn’t for me.

As a good AT&T customer, I wasn’t eligible for their best price. That was only for switchers. The price for me would be $250 more per phone! I will maintain a bad taste from that for a while and though it was the independent telling me… I’ll blame AT&T, the enabler.

On top of that, AT&T sells the exact same Internet access for a variety of prices. If you’ve got an iPhone, you really get jobbed. There’s also a different price for Blackberries, phones like my Blackjack and standard phones, like my old RAZR.

It’s all the same access. It’s all unlimited access. They’re just differently priced.

A blog reading friend, Pat (who once worked selling cell phones), was incredibly helpful, setting me up with Rob at the AT&T store in Meriden. Rob did what he could, but it still cost me $160 more per phone than that online teaser ad led me to believe.

Rob was the calming influence in all of this. Of all the people I dealt with, he’s the only one who could say the sky was blue without me being tempted to look up and make sure.

This is one very cool phone – though being a phone is only a small part of what it does. I’ve already been online, downloading programs to better web surf, deal with email and upload photos and video.

The video and still image quality is surprisingly good, considering the tiny lens. It’s not going to unseat “Clicky,” but I will be using this functionality. In fact, on our upcoming vacation, I’m planning on doing a little vlogging from the Blackjack.

The phone connects to the Internet on AT&T’s high speed 3G network (available here at work, but not at home). It’s still not like real broadband, but it’s not too bad. Of course the relatively small screen is not well suited for web browsing.

If you’ve never used one of these, you’ve probably looked and said, “those keys are awfully small.” They are. Still, I haven’t had any trouble with the keys. Where my big fingers do cause trouble is with the center navigation switch. For me, it’s very difficult to press it, without pressing what’s next to it.

Some of my trouble is caused by being left handed. There’s a navigation wheel located perfectly for right handed people, but not me. I will learn to use it with time, as lefties learn to use right handed computer mice.

It didn’t take more than a few minutes to start to realize the power this phone possesses. I understand even more why the phone companies are fighting network neutrality. This phone allows you to bypass the cell carriers on many things they want to sell.

For instance, there’s a service sold by some carriers for around $10 a month. It turns your phone into a pretty cool GPS receiver with live traffic reports. Google gives that functionality away for free! It’s tough to sell against free. As far as I can tell, I’m about $40 away from using Google and my phone as a GPS receiver.

I’m curious to hear Stef’s impressions when after she unpacks her phone. I hope she’s as pleased as I am… and I’ve only scratched the surface.

iPhone Arrives

OK – Let’s get this out of the way first – I want one.

If there’s been a product launch more hyped than today’s, I can’t remember it. Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone and the world went nuts.

Everywhere I’ve looked, there have been stories. Jobs was on CNBC this afternoon and Nightline this evening. David Pogue, writing in the NY Times, bragged of spending an hour with him, though mostly ignoring Jobs to play with an iPhone.

When I first saw it, I said, “too big.” Maybe clunky is a better description. On the other hand, it’s quite slender. Jobs said it was thinner than the Motorola Q.

Will it fit in my pocket or will I have to wear a cellphone holster?

What makes Apple so special… what made the iPod such an amazing breakthrough product, is their understanding of the user interface. The iPod has the best user interface of any electronics device ever made – period.

If you don’t have one, ask anyone who does how long it took them to learn how to use it? Zero. An iPod’s operation is obvious the moment it’s in your hand. The word is, “intuitive.”

Attention to the man-machine interface is what Jobs promised, and then demonstrated.

There is one physical button on the iPhone. Everything else is done from the 3.5″ high resolution touch screen. Menus change as needed. The interface adapts.

There’s a 2 megapixel camera onboard, but no video. It’s Apple. Aren’t they the computer company known for video? That’s a glaring omission.

I watched 31:05 of Steve Jobs’ keynote speech&#185 from Mac World before hitting pause. I am not a Mac guy. Jobs isn’t my savior. I thought his first 20 minutes were top notch. Then, his presentation began to bore me.

I’m not 100% sure why I want one. The iPod music portion is wasted on me, though I’d enjoy the ability to watch podcasts. It’s something I already do on the computer.

I am attracted by the ‘smart’ phone and the ability to carry email and web browsing in my pocket.

I don’t see a computer as a burden, but a tool to help me leverage life. Currently, that tool is only available to me at home and work. There are lots of new uses I can see and probably more I can’t.

Did I mention it’s a fun toy?

&#185 – Around 3:00 AM I watched the remainder. He’s a great pitchman, but sometimes runs out of steam or gets overly “Silicon Valley geeky.” Even I can’t take that.

About This Vacation Thing

The western vacation is months away – so I won’t dwell on it incessantly. Still, I’ve been doing a lot of web browsing about where we’ll be going and it’s very exciting… and weird.

Here’s the June-July cover of the Canyon Country Zephyr from Moab, UT, which bills itself as “All the News That Causes Fits!”

Hey, when your contact address is spankme2times@excite.com, you know fine journalism can’t be far behind.

I think of this part of the Southwest as conservative and staid. Maybe I’m wrong – at least as far as Moab, UT is concerned.

My Night Of Spyware Eradication

I think I’ve gotten them. I’m hoping they’ve been slayed. Who really knows?

Tonight at work, one of my computers started acting a little nuts. The farther I peered inside, the more things I saw that were out of whack.

One-by-one looking at the list of running programs I found what seems to be a full suite of spyware/adware from begin2search.com. Hey guys, thanks for the programs. Not!

How did they get there? This is a machine that’s never used for web browsing.

As it turns out, when we had a dedicated high speed T-1 line installed, this machine was put out on the Internet to test it. Running Windows 2000, it was like telling burglars where to find unlocked doors.

Microsoft has got to take a bit of responsibility here too. What were they thinking. This is a security nightmare.

I know my way around the inner workings of these machines and it still took me hours. Technophobes don’t even have a chance. These bits of rogue programming are impervious to the uninitiated. They certainly wouldn’t go away with just one swipe of one spyware program.

Please, never again.

Scrabble – Obsessing Again

In 1978 I moved to Center City Philadelphia, on Rodman Street between 11th and 12th. After years of living in homogenized apartment complexes in the suburbs, I moved into an older building on a street so narrow there was only room for one car to pass with no parking at the curb! I moved into an apartment one floor above my friend Neal’s.

Center City Philadelphia was great. I could walk out my front door to get the paper or have a bite to eat. No car was necessary in the neighborhood and almost anything you wanted was in the neighborhood.

One day, early on, I found Neal played Scrabble and I asked if he wanted a game. That began a Scrabble obsession.

We played that first game and I immediately realized Neal operated on a different Scrabble level from me. He put down “ani” and “zygote.” My jaw fell. How could I compete when I didn’t know “aa” was a Hawaiian volcanic rock?

Of the first 20 games we played, I lost 19. Actually, I lost 19 in a row before winning one, and that was probably because of incredibly lucky tile selection.

People who don’t play it think poker is a game of luck, not skill. They don’t realize that Scrabble has many of the same elements of skill versus chance… yet no one thinks of Scrabble as a game of luck. After 19 losses I certainly didn’t.

I played Neal enough to get better, though certainly never anywhere near as good as he was.

When I moved from Philadelphia to Buffalo, the Scrabble playing ended. With Neal I had the willing partner and convenience that I’d never find again.

My going away gifts included a Scrabble dictionary with this inscription:

To my protege –

May your Neilson ratings never fall as low as our first game. May your future be a seven letter word with a triple word score.

Neal

When I first got on the Internet in the late 80s&#185 I found a server (in Toronto I think) which hosted Scrabble games. I played for a while, but as the net developed and there were other things to see, I lost interest.

A few nights ago I watched a Scrabble documentary on the Times/Discovery Channel. All of a sudden I was motivated to play again.

After a few minutes of searching I found a site which hosts free online Scrabble games. I know the Scrabble trademark is incredibly well protected, so the only reason this site survives probably has to do with the fact that it’s in Romania.

I downloaded the software and started to play Thursday. By Friday I had 5 games under my belt (4 losses, though the last was only by 2 points).

Since the site records all your games and understands the competition you’re playing against, it ranks you as a player. Now I will have a goal, improve my ranking.

As with online poker, it is not too difficult to cheat while playing. I am hoping that the others I play against, who have sworn not to cheat, uphold their end of the bargain.

In the meantime, I wonder if Neal knows about this? Before long I could be losing to him again!

&#185 – When I first got on the Internet (thanks to a co-worker who was able to get me an account from his university) it was a very different place. Web browsing was done in a non-graphical way. Information was found on Gophers and Archie servers. It was totally non-commercial.

The Penguin And I Are Speaking Again

With an international crew of geeks at the ready (they were working on video drivers before I got stated) I have finally got my Linux machine up and running while looking and sounding good.

It has been a long and arduous task – and even today it reverted to some of its old habits; losing its Internet connection and sound functions.

The benchmark I had been running, “glxgears”, has gone from 130 fps to over 300 fps. When I switched to fewer colors, though still more than I can discern, the speed went to 600+ fps.

I have run a few screensavers and a ridiculous little game to stress the video system, and the computer has responded perfectly.

Now, what to do with the computer? It sits next to this perfectly competent Windows XP machine which can already do most everything.

I will be looking for some modeling and animation software to run. The Linux machine is the perfect testbed because I can dedicate the processor and not have to worry about bumping other things like mail or web browsing.

Still, the most important thing is, it’s running. I’m just not sure it’s currently, or permanently, stable.

Modernizing My PC

I have two desktop PC’s in this room. The first – the one I’m typing on now – is a box I built myself after spending weeks pouring through every computer publication and website known to man. The other is an older, slower machine they were throwing away at work. It has hosted at least 10 different flavors of Windows and Linux and is constantly in a state a flux.

The CPU – the brains behind the computer – is an Intel Pentium II-300. By today’s standards, it’s old and slow. Here’s the dirty little secret – if all you’re doing is word processing and web browsing, it’s perfect.

Shh, don’t tell.

It is my auxiliary machine and I do use it a lot, sometimes for photos and video, so it would be nice if it were a little faster. Last night I found what I hope will be the solution to this problem.

Tiger Direct is advertising a motherboard/memory/CPU/cooling fan combo for $99.99. That’s an unbelievable deal and will give me a spare machine that’s faster than anything else here.

If you’re not a computer geek, a motherboard is the circuitry that ties together the computer chip (CPU) and everything else. Different motherboards have different functionality. This is pretty much a Swiss Army Knife, with video, audio, network connections and a host of other features right on the board. Previously, these demanded separate cards.

Usually, video on the motherboard isn’t my favorite way to go. It’s is often slower and less well thought out than stand alone video card which plug into a slot on the board. Since I’m not a game player, and video speed isn’t paramount, it’s a very small trade off.

This motherboard uses an AMD Athlon XP 2400+ CPU. When most people think of computer chips, they think Intel. This AMD is a virtual work alike. Other than cost (AMD is cheaper) I can’t see any difference – and I’ve been using AMD chips for years.

The plan is to remove the motherboard from the auxiliary machine and replace it with this one. The case, power supply and disk drives will remain the same. Everything should just plug in.

It really is very close to getting a brand new machine for $99.99. Of course that $99.99 is after rebates, but I’ll be diligent.

Earlier today, having already decided this would be a fun/good thing to do, I went to a local computer show in an elementary school gym. I couldn’t have matched this deal for less than twice the price.

This is a project I’m looking forward to. Ripping a computer apart and rebuilding it is something you don’t get to do every day. Hopefully, when it gets booted for the first time it will understand my angst and go right to work. Otherwise, I will be forced to threaten it with water. PC’s are scared of water.

Two Computer Related Problems

Things are supposed to go smoothly, but they never do. I’ve just suffered through two computer related problems – one taking a full ten hours of time without a solution.

First things first. I notice earlier today that I had only received a few emails all day. Normally, I get 100-200 emails a day, the vast majority of which are spam.

I went to my webhost’s site (not Comcast, my ISP, but hostforweb.com who runs the server you’re getting geofffox.com on and also my mail server) and used their tech support chat. It didn’t take more than a few minutes for Fred to tell me something had hung and all mail sent to me (or at least the vast majority of it) had be sent packing.

As best I can tell this had been going on for 24-36 hours. Oh well. There’s really nothing I can do. I’m not sure about he actual bounce message returned, so some might be re-queued and re-sent.

The second problem was much more time consuming and sinister. My friend John has an old Compaq Armada laptop and a pristine copy of Windows 98 from a desktop machine that’s no longer in service. All I had to do was load it up and he’d take it back. This is something I’m glad to do for a friend.

The Armada 1590 is a Pentium 166 laptop that was loaded with Windows 95 and originally came with 16 MB of RAM. Today, that’s a ridiculously small amount of memory. Windows 98 might have run, but it would have run ponderously slow.

I reformatted the hard drive, checked for and installed a BIOS update and then set out to load Windows 98. This is a task I’ve done dozens of times… and never with a problem.

Windows loaded fine, but as soon as I got to the first screen after the installation and the computer began to play it’s little “I’m Ready” music, it locked up tight as could be. It would neither respond to keystrokes or the mouse/touchpad. Rebooting brought me back to the same problem.

I went on Google’s Usenet site which often has great tech support ideas, only to read a series of unhappy Armada owners who tried and never quite got Windows 98 to work.

I reformatted and tried again from scratch. Each time you do that, figure an hour or so until you’re at the first workable screen. I loaded Windows 98 totally at least four times.

After a while, and after staring at those cryptic Microsoft error messages (never had so many words and numbers given so little insight into what’s going wrong), I decided the problem might be with the audio driver on the Windows 98 disk. For some reason it didn’t seem to get along with the hardware which was, after all, designed long before Windows 98. I turned off the audio hardware from the control panel and booted again.

Success – but not for long.

Even a freshly loaded Windows 98 (or XP for that matter) PC needs loads of updates, patches and fixes. The more I downloaded and fixed, the more unstable the laptop became. BSODs (“Blue Screen of Death”) came fast and furiously.

Finally, I got to load DirectX 9. I have no idea what DirectX does, other than to say loading this update into the laptop brought it to its knees! Not only did the laptop crash but the Registry (which tells the computer where and what all the programs on it’s drive are) was now corrupted. Windows 98 was more than glad to restore a prior version of the Registry, which of course brought me back to square one.

I played this game twice.

Finally I called John on the phone and said, “No mas.” OK, actually it was Roberto Duran who said that, and neither John nor I speak Spanish, but you get the point.

Can this laptop be made to play nicely with Windows 98? Maybe. But, is it worth it? Probably not – I’m not really sure – oh who knows. I’m just so frustrated at this point.

The few fleeting moments I did have it running, it seemed reasonably nimble with web browsing. And, in that there’s some Internet wisdom that needs to be shared. This computer is only a Pentium I at 166 MHz. Lots of people throw machines of that speed out as too slow. With enough RAM – and John had boosted the 16 to 82 MB – even a slower Pentium is plenty fast for working the web.

Would I play games with it or edit video or run Photoshop or other high end multimedia programs? Hell no. But, most of what everyone does on the web demands much less horsepower. The laptop I use most is a Pentium II 300 MHz and it kills.

As for John’s laptop, before I attempt any more software loading, I am going to bring it near the sink with the water running full blast and explain what we do to computers that don’t cooperate. That trick always works.