Mac

Sony Ericsson T610

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My new T-Mobile phone is a new Sony Ericsson T610. It is supposed to be the upgrade to the T68i that I had. I actually still have the T68, but I am never happy with the signal strength I get on it. T-Mobile discounted the phone by %50 with a mail in rebate so I took it. I will wait till they offer the Motorola V600 and the price comes down.

So far my reviews of this phone are limited. The screen is nice. It is bright and crisp. The buttons are small and annoying like the T68i, but I can deal with that. I only used it for 2 minutes on the phone so I am not sure about voice quality or volume.

Bluetooth looks good on it. I was able to setup and pair the phone with my Powerbook in 2 minutes. I don’t know how that will work with my Thinkpad. I like that the new bluetooth devices don’t need you to specify that you want to make them discoverable. That is good for setup, but bad for security. Also nice is the fact that I don’t have a big bright blue light that is always on when bluetooth is on. My T68i did that. It was really annoying. All I have is an icon on the top of the phone screen telling me I have bluetooth on. That is all I need.

iSync with bluetooth was easy also. I dumped my entire phone book to the phone in 3 minutes. I didn’t even take out the Sony Ericsson software for the PC since I can do that all on my Mac with no special software. Have I mentioned I love my Powerbook?

Downloading or uploading pictures was a snap also. Just told my Powerbook to browse folders on bluetooth devices and up came my phones memory. I downloaded the two photos I took yesterday.

What I was unable to do was setup my powerbook to use the T610 as a GPRS modem via bluetooth. I found a few sites on the internet that explain how to do it. I downloaded some modem scripts, but have still not been able to get it to work. I only worked on it for like 15 minutes last night before I needed to get to bed. I had an early train to catch today.

I got bluetooth GPRS to work on my old Powerbook and my T68i using AT&T Wireless last year. I should be able to get it working with the T610. I just need to work on it. Kind of pissed that I couldn’t get it working before my trip. I could be using it right now on the train. Instead I get to clear my head and update my blog!

This blog entry was written while listening to Angry from the album “Mad Season” by Matchbox Twenty

Missing Sync Update

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This program is awesome. The only problem I am having is when I do a bluetooth sync. My iPaq slows way down and IE on the iPaq cannot be stopped until I soft reset it. I don’t think it is the Missing Sync software, but the Bluetooth software on the iPaq. that is my theory right now. I want to try a bluetooth sync on my PC and see what happens but so far I have been unable to get active sync to work at all with bluetooth. Plug n Play my ass. I will tell you Apple has the right idea with owning the OS and the hardware. Stuff just works.

I may actually go out and buy a WIFI card for my iPaq and sync that way over the network. That would be really cool. I am still working out the details for that. The WIFI SD/IO card is like $110.

Missing Sync

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I just bought Mark / Space’s the missing sync for the pocket PC. I am now using it to sync my HP iPaq 1945 with my iMac. It works as advertised. I like that I can sync avantgo now without having my work laptop at home. It also does bluetooth syncing. I love that. It was kind of pricey at $40 something, but it is really cool.

I also have their palm sync product. It is good, but I am having problems with the avantgo sync with my Treo and the iMac. I need to find time to work on that issue.

So far high marks for Mark / Space and their products. Makes owning a Mac less stressful knowing you can use more hardware with it, (i.e. my pocket pc and palm) without less features than I would on a PC.

Powerbook Update

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I have to say my original assessment is correct. it does run cooler than the older models. It is not uncomfortable to use after a while like the old one was. I only have 256megs of ram and so far it has been fine. I haven’t needed to bump it up to 512 or a Gig of memory. It could use a bigger hard drive, but that would have been a special order and I didn’t want to buy the laptop direct from apple or wait 3 weeks for it. Battery life is ok, but I am comparing it with my Thinkpad with a Pentium M that sips the power and lasts hours.

I am on the hunt for a bluetooth mouse for the powerbook. I cannot find a good one. I don’t like the apple 1 button mouse so that is out. the only other one that works for the mac, a belkin one I believe had a bad review. I would really like one that I can use between a PC and a Mac. Oh to dream

If I haven’t mentioned it before (I have) my Powerbook using Kung-Log is my Blogging system of choice. I do allot on the train (doing that right now). The keyboard is just great on this thing.

The Early Train

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Now that Jayson is gone you would think I would leave my house normal time. Think again. Today I got up and ended up on the early train. It is funny because 2 years ago this early train was the normal train I got on, but now to me it is the early one.

Hung out most of the day sunday. I got Quicken to finally work on the Mac. I even figured out most of the online banking issues I was having.

Meet Alison for dinner. We ended up at Chillis. We always try to go there after the movies and never stay since the line is so long. Today we hung out for 30 minutes and got a table. It was a nice low key dinner.

I was going to see my family during the day, but my mom and sister took morgan shopping and they didn’t get back until after I left for my plans, so I missed them. Morgan is walking now. I can’t wait to see her. She is so CUTE!!!

Quicken

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I am a long time quicken user. I have been using it since at least 1995. I have almost every version since then. I have also used Turbo Tax like 3 times. I am a huge fan. The problem I am running into is that I now have Mac’s. I used to only have a PC, so moving my quicken data from one PC to another was as simple as copying the files. Now if I want to use Quicken on my Mac I have to convert it. As simple as Intuit claims it is, it is not so simple.

Back in Oct/Nov 2002 I converted my quicken data to run on my Powerbook. Once converted it was not simple to continue using my PC files. So I just left a copy on my PC and used my Powerbook. In AuGust of 2003 I decided I wanted to have both a PC and a Mac copy of my files. I like having options. I converted everything back to PC format. It takes several hours because out of thousands of transactions at least a few don’t convert. Then you have to spend time figuring out what one didn’t. Once done converting I never did keep updating my Mac version.

Since AuGust I have been running Quicken only on my thinkpad. Now I decided I want it back on my Powerbook. Once again I have to go through the whole conversion process. This time it wasn’t as bad as before, but I still had some problems. Most related to how the two different quicken programs keep investment information. Intuit should get their act together and keep the feature set’s of both products the same. On the plus side I found an error in how I recorded some stock information. That I guess is the silver lining in my whole ordeal.

My last gripe with Quicken for the Mac is that sometimes it has problems moving the file from one machine to another. When I migrated to a new computer last year I couldn’t open my old data file. I had to export the data and create a new file and import the old data. it was a stupid waste of time. Hopefully they fixed the problem in the 2004 version that came pre-installed on my newest Mac.

Gadget Update

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My PalmOne Treo 600 is on preorder. I hope to get it by mid march. Right around my birthday. Sooner would be nice, but I don’t have any faith in PalmOne since I have been waiting since October for this device.

Palm also announced they will not support OS X in the new version of the Palm OS. That pisses me off since they are compeeting with microsoft but only make software that works on Windows. Me having 2 Mac’s now doesn’t help matters either. I finally started using iCal & Address book. They are not so bad. I like that I can change the font and color of notes in outlook, but that is the only difference between the software that I don’t like. Thankfully a third party company says they will make sync software that will work with isync. I am going to try them out when I get the Treo 600. The software is supposed to sync with avantgo, a function Palm’s current software does not do. Unfortunatly the software from Mark / Space does not work with my current Treo 270, so I will wait a few weeks.

I am about to cancel my Verizon Wireless phone. I haven’t needed to use since December, except once. That constitutes a reason to cancel a $40 a month charge. I will take the hit on early termination fee. This will be the first time I have ever paid that fee, but I don’t want to wait until augist to cancel the phone. That will cost too much. Once done, I will have just my T-Mobile phone. Now I have to figure out how to use the Treo 600 with T-Mobile while connecting to my Powerbook so I have a dial up connection for it. No Bluetooth yet for the Treo so I will need a USB cable to do this. I am not sure if software exists to do what I want, but I will look.

Powerbook Is Back

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I got my Powerbook back today from apple. not sure what they did to fix it, but it seems to close ok now. It is not as snug as my old powerbook when it closes but I am dealing with it.

The new 1GHZ 12″ Powerbook runs allot cooler than the other one I had. Other than that I cannot tell much difference from the old one. I haven’t done much intensive work on it yet so I cannot tell how much faster it is. The keyboard is still decent. It is a major improvement from my T-40 from work.

Now all I have to do is finish installing all my software on the powerbook. Of course that is an every changing task!!!

Powerbook Went For Help Today

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I sent in the new Powerbook for repair today. I should hopefully get it back by the end of next week. Still rather pissed that a laptop that was broken out of the box is not replaced, but I have to wait a week to get it fixed. Even with all the leverage I get because of how much business my company gives our hardware vendor I still have to get it repaired.

I eagerly await the return of the computer!!!

Back From Kingston Again

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I am on the train back from Kingston, again. I went up for 2 days since we are short handed on the support side up there. I spent most of today interviewing people for a help-desk position. Yesterday was taken up by miscellaneous issues. I always try to bring up work from NYC when I goto kingston. And every time I do, I end up getting none of it done. This trip was no different.

The work keeps piling up. I hope to clean out my backlog tomorrow, if possible.

On the plus side, the posts from today were written on my new Powerbook on the train. I can once again blog while in transit!!!