Jeff Peterman "What we got here, is . . . failure to communicate."
Doug YriartLinux Rocks!
One bad and one good thing to add about the iPhone.
I have three e-mail accounts that I check with my phone. On my Tilt, it was easy to see when a new message came in and on which e-mail. With the iPhone, it buzzes ONCE when a message comes in, with no indication on the screen. Then, I have to, I have to check each one of the three (multiple steps) to find the new message.
In my car, I can hook up the iPhone to the power outlet and to the auxiliary in jack, then have it play music through my car. If I want to make a call, I can press a button on my third-party Bluetooth earpiece, to make a call: - the music will pause, I'll hear a beep in my ear, I can say, for example, "Call Sam Mobile" and the phone will search through my contacts, find the mobile/cell phone number for Sam, and make the call. Once I press the button to hang up, the music resumes. It all integrates well together.
Jeff, may I threadjack a bit on the larger topic of "well its time for a new phone" ? (You're gonna love how it ends.)
I noticed earlier this week that as soon as I stepped off the big jet plane and powered up my Treo650 in a place I hadn't been for a while...It powered down minutes later.
I power it up, it powers it down. Sometimes right away, sometimes a hour later, pretty reliably within 5 seconds of a call coming in or going out, all of which defeats the purpose of having a cell phone. Since our big jet plane was not reported missing in flight or abucted by aliens, I figured, my phone just waited to come home to die. And after resets didn't work, I did a final synch and did the dreaded HARD RESET, rebricking the phone and ensuring everything in it might be lost if the synch didn't co-operate afterwards.
Guess what? Phone still psycho. Someone lent me a Treo750W the next night so I'd at least have a working phone, although, the 750W didn't want to take a beam with all my contacts in it, making it a less than perfect solution.
Next day, full of caffiene and brisk fall air, I foolishly called AT&T for their opinion. Oh, sure, this was all my fault because I use my phone 24x7, I leave it on while charging, and I rarely shut it off. You see, the phone needs to be shut off in order to charge fully (ahuh) and to receive system updates from AT&T. It can't be updated while it is in use, it needs to be off while the updates are loading. (Ahuh, again.)
I told the nice lady (and she really was nice, from the mid-US, and we shared many good laughs) that I'd bet my FCC licenses, my Palm Developer membership, and the lives of a couple of Motorola engineers that all agreed with the TSA and FAA, all of us know that when the phone is OFF it is OFF and it can't receive anything. And if it can--then there's a real danger I'm going to have to tell the TSA about.
So I guessed that reality is the phone must be OFF in order to LOG INTO THE NETWORK to see if there are any updates waiting for it. And that unless it has been off, it doesn't log in the same way--so it doesn't get updates. Could be, there were updates waiting "back home" since the tower equipment is different here. Or...
All of a sudden a new error message pops up "SIM! Power on? off? OK?" and then does so again in five minutes. Since neither one of us had ever seen this message, she shared with me that "sometimes SIM chips go bad in 2-3 years" and that since I was getting a SIM error and nothing else (power downs, hard resets) had helped, she would authorize a new SIM chip for my phone for free. SIM chips wear out?? From just sitting in the phone? News to me.
Even better, her computer told me the nearest AT&T store was 9 miles away, in another county, at a non-existant street address. But when I logged into their web site--I found a new store, open less than two weeks, 1/4 mile away. AH, corporate competence and customer service.
Well, the rep was lovely, the new SIM chip seems to have fixed the phone. It is good to know that AT&T still has no idea how to operate tins cans and strings, let alone any more modern technology, and I'll be keeping on the edge of my seat--because your iPhone and their Blackberry Tour would be the only phones they have that might replace my Treo. Unless I snag a Treo850 at a less than ridiculous price.
"The phone must be OFF in order to receive an update." ROFLMAO!
"HEY RUBE!"
You're interested in the Blackberry and the iPhone but not any of the WM phones?
My wife likes her Blackberry, but complains about the browser - I helped her installed Opera Mini, and that makes it a little better. But she mostly wants a PDA phone with Web access, while I want a lot more (a mini-PC in my hands).
Today, I used the phone a little more seriously - waiting for a new license at the DMV. I searched around for some useful free "Apps", found a free eReader, and downloaded a free Philip K. Dick short story to read (The Skull). The iPhone worked quite well as an ebook reader, and the story (written in the late 50's) was entertaining, even if a little predictable from today's point of view. On the other hand, the battery is a little low, and I'll see how it hold up by the time I get home (I charge it in my normal manner - relying on the 50 minute commutes in the morning and evening to restore the battery, except on weekends). If I'm back to at least 80% power by the time I get home, I'll be happy, If much under that, my normal charging pattern won't work and I'll have to plug it in at home when I go to bed. (The pattern worked fine for the Tilt - unless I left some hower draining application running n the background by mistake, which can't happen with the iPhone.)
Replacement SIM cards are free, to the best of my knowledge. Never had one "wear out" and the last phone I used for 3 years...
AT&T no less...
I've never heard of one wearing out but since the average cell phone is tossed in a short year and the new one often comes with a new SIM card...sticking an electonic chip on an unstable cardboard surface might be problematic. perhaps it is one of those may reasons that "moisture" kills phones, as the paper would respond to moisture with a great deal of motion--relative to a plastic substrate.
Anyway, the formal AT&T policy as of last week is that IF THEY DIAGNOSE a SIM card failure, the replacement is free. If you walk into a company store, or worse into a franchise, you are supposed to pay $5 to purchase one. Unless the failure is nored in your AT&T tech log file. That's their policy, and if you can disprove it, you'llonly have proven they were lying again.
What I like is the new Verizon comercial with the big blue "3G Coverage" map against the sparse red AT&T 3G coverage map. I suspect that's about as objective and valid as the map showing how there have been no sightings of wild wolves or bears in NYC since the subway system was built. Cause and effort, I'm sure.
But...for the first time Verizon is trying to dazzle us with science. I'm waiting 30 days to see what AT&T spins back, besides claiming AT&T has the fastest 3G in the nation, which users seem to disagree with.
Jeff-
Let's face it, Bill Gates owes most of us an apology or two over the past 30 years, and until he comes by to make it, WinCE is still WinCE and I'm going to call it that, even if "Win Me!" is what he wants now. What he wants--is his problem, till he apologizes and makes nice for all the years of sloppy practices. (And personally I'd love to know if the agency that suggested "WINCE" was the same agent of Karma that invented "CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?". <G>
A friend lent me a Palm 750W while I was trying to get my phone on antipsychotic drugs (yes, the new ObamaCare also provides full rx coverage for silicon creatures, even the resident aliens) and...I've yet to be impressed. I mean, it seems OK but it doesn't make me go "OOH!" and "WOW!" about anything. Then I'm sure there's some way to port my Palm Desktop contacts over to OutlookExpress or WIndows Contacts...I've just been a bit busy yet. Now that my Palm--or rather, my scurilous, disengenius, direputable and nasty lying carrier has fessed up and fixed up--the crisis is off a bit, and I look forward to what they all swear will be here "Real Soon Now". As Jerry Pournelle used to say.
Maybe I should just get a top-end blackberry and steampunk it into the case from my old Motorola Brick phone. That long rack of AA cells, that fullwave antenna....Slip a little lead foil inside to line the case against RFI and watch the TSA guys go bug-eyed and foaming at the mouth maybe, too? <G>
Note that Verizon claims AT&T's coverage is 1/3 of theirs. The map certainly is NOT representatibe of that. Perhaps they use the came folks who calculate "Average cost of a gallon of gas"??? <sigh>
Some more positives/negatives.
It was nice to be able to get in my car, hook up the iPhone to the Aux in jack on my radio, press the button on my Bluetooth and say "play music" and have it start playing MP3 files. Later on, I switched to the next track by pressing the button and saying "next song", and then selected an different album by saying "play album Across the Universe", and finally "play artist Pink Floyd". And then I pressed the button and said "call home home" and it dialed the entry on my phone for home, paused the music until I was done, and the went back to playing. I don't know if a Windows Mobile phone can do this so effortlessly.
On my Windows Mobile phone, I sync with my work contacts and calender automatically with Exchange. When I get home, I can connect to my home PC with a cable and sync with the contacts and calender at home. Because the phone keeps everything integrated, the contacts and calender on my home PC and work PC are essentially the same. With the iPhone, the two PCs are handled independently, and I can have the phone show just home stuff, just work stuff, or both - this is a plus if you want to keep home and work information segrated, but a minus if you want to keep everything synched (I do). In addition, if you want to add a contact from the "recent calls" list, you don't get a choice of where to put it: as far as I can tell, I can only add the contacts to my Exchange contact list, not to my personal contacts - which was a problem today when I wanted to add a personal contact. And once an item is in the Exchange contacts list, there's no easy way to move it. The Windows Mobile phones are definitely ahead here.
John, actually all IC's can wear out, the normal life expectancy is that after 1000 years the metal traces will electroplate themselves into different positions and cause failure. In the case of a SIM card which has been printed on unstable PAPER FIBERS insteaed of plastic (like a smart credit card), the fibers are in constant motion as the temperature and humidity change, and the bond between the foil and paper is subject to failure as well.
So, yes, in theory a SIM card could "wear" out from environmental and production factors. AT&T didn't even say to reseat it--just to change it.
Airport scanners and laptops? You mean, just because an x-ray machine generates ionizing radiation (by definition) and strong magnetic fields, and IC makers say that ionizing radiation damages ICs (IBM used to say the typical server located at sea level would suffer four memory corruptions per year from cosmic rays, unless it ran ECC memory to correct them)...that the TSA could possibly be wrong when they say they can do no harm?
Personally, I always get worried when I'm going through baggage inspection. Did I pack the cheese, and leave the C4 in the fridge at home? Or did I accidentally take the C4 instead of lunch? You know, they're just SO SIMILAR and the TSA keeps telling me, they can't tell the two apart either.
The lead counterweight under my laptop keyboard (to keep it from tipping off my knees) makes their eyes bug out every time, even when I warn them "It's radio-opaque and will need a hand inspection". No, they just have to xray it every time anyway.
Better to just shut down civilian aviation, don't you think? (sigh)
