Mobile Phone

My Treo Is Dead, Say Hello To Treo # 4

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My Treo 270 died from unknown causes friday night. It just wouldn’t get a network signal every again. I called T-Mobile and after 90 minutes speaking to 7 different people I finally got a new on shipping to me. I love those Treo’s, but this problem reminds me that my original one worked for not even 2 days before it died on me. I got a replacement after a week that time. This time it should take 2 – 3 days. So counting me selling my second one, I will be on my 4th Treo when the new one arrives. It should last about 1 – 2 months and then I will get the new Treo 600’s when they come out.

Also DOA this week is my blackberry pager. It finally stopped working completely. It went from bad lcd screen, to rebooting when sending messages, to rebooting every 5 minutes. Skytel claims that they can fix the reboot problem, but not the lcd issue. if I cannot read the email, I have no reason for the pager. The problem is that blackberry or RIM the makers of blackberry’s just stopped selling the 850’s, the little pager size units everyone has. they are focusing on the bigger PDA style devices. I am not happy because I want a pager like device. My hardware rep has a lead on something for me, if not I am hitting ebay for a used skytel blackberry.

The Different Ways To Communicate

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Going up to Kingston gets me thinking about how I use the communication tools at my disposal. If you ask anyone, I have too many gadgets. The problem is sometimes none of them work the way I need them to. Right now my blackberry’s screen is all screwed up so I have a hard time reading it. I need to replace that. On a good day the screen sucks, so I would like to get my mail another way. The Treo Mail program requires you to pay $50 a year. I don’t know if the mail function on the new Treo will be the same as the old one, so I don’t want to buy the Treo Mail if I plan on upgrading to the new Treo 600 in 2-3 months when it comes out. Eudora Mail for the Palm sucks, so I can’t check mail that way. The problem is I want to send and receive email on the road, but I don’t want to pay the crazy hotel charges for a phone call. I am thinking of getting software that will allow me to use my Treo’s GPRS data service on my laptop. the problem is the same as with the Treo Mail. Can I still use it when I get the new Treo 600? If so I am sold. If not, I don’t want to fork over 50 bucks.

Another problem with the blackberry is I use it for alerts all the time. If I start forwarding all my mail to it, I will get duplicate emails when I get an alert. (Alerts goto my mailbox and the blackberry, so sending my mailbox to the blackberry will duplicate some mail.) the other problem is if I turn on forwarding, I have to turn it off. It becomes a pain. I never know when I will need it or not. With the Treo, I can turn it on or off from the handheld.

It is crazy that I now have all these options, but still can’t make a decision on what to use. I want to get rid of one or two devices. Who needs a PDA/Phone, a pager, and a cell phone. It is too much to carry. In addition I have to carry around my thinkpad.

My Personal Phone Dillema

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It survived a month. I still have (and like) the Treo 270. I totally think having the unlimited data account that actually works in allot of places makes this device good, versus just using it as a cell phone. To tell you the truth I almost never use it as a cell phone. I do when my Verizon phone runs out of batteries or if I have to call a number I don’t have in my Verizon phone’s limited speed dial. other than that I don’t use it that much. I just forward my T-Mobile calls to my Verizon number.

That brings me to another problem I am having. I am too connected. Gus mentioned that I have too many numbers to remember. It is true. I have my primary cell phone. That is Verizon right now. I also have my old AT&T number that I don’t use, but can’t cancel it because the contract is up in December. I then have the T-Mobile number that I use for data. I also have my NYC work number and now I have a Kingston work number. I have trouble routing calls places. Right now I have a message in NYC telling people I am out of the office. My T-Mobile phone is sending call’s to my Verizon phone. And the Kingston voice mail is telling people they can press 1 or 2 and get me at other numbers. I don’t have a solution though. T-Mobile kicks but on the wireless internet so I keep them. Verizon has the best cell coverage, so I keep them. And I need my work numbers. Now in december if/when cell phone number portability happens I will cancel my AT&T contract and take that number and move it to T-Mobile so I can keep the good number. I need to see how I can pull that off.

On top of all that, I have a blackberry pager from work. I hope one day for the Treo to work well enough that I can get rid of the blackberry. I will see what the new Treo 600 can do.

More work, less hacking, unless it is for work

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It is monday again, and I am off to work. Today we meet with another telecom provider to see if they have a good deal. We need to make a decision this week.

OK, time for me to gripe about something. I am on the train, and cannot stand it when people receive cell phone calls (or make them) and have an entire conversation. In addition to that these people usually talk like a plane is flying by. Now I am all for cell phone use. I have 2 of them, and I don’t even have a home phone (another story). When I am out and about I will receive calls but only talk for a min if it is not important. If it is a work emergency (which I get more often than I would like) I talk. What is with this casual talking on a train with 100 other people. We don’t care what you have to say to your friends or family. We don’t need cell phone restriction laws, we need some etiquette from people. Ok, I am done ranting.

Speaking of cell phones I am kind of bummed that my main phone (an AT&T GSM Provided Sony Ericsson T68i) won’t work in our office in Kingston. Actually it wont work in kingston at all. I am not sure what will work well up there. I know verizon works, and t-mobile, but not sure if either of them provides good signal at our site. I have a verizon phone but I wanted to cancel it. No I am paying the monthly fee to wait and see. I also have a T-Mobile SIM card, but no phone. I am holding onto that for a bit longer also.

I gotta tell you, I go through phones (just like PDA’s) fast. I just upgrade to the latest and greatest allot. I was on ebay last night looking for a phone for the CEO of my company. He is going to europe and wanted a phone. He has a SIM already, but no phone. Since I didn’t have any extra he said to look for one. Well after looking I don’t see any GSM phones that do everything I want, except for the one I already have. For my CEO we are just going to rent one, but I started looking for myself also. Like I said I don’t have a phone for my T-Mobile SIM. It is weird. For the first time in a while I am ready to spend money.

OK, back to work talk. This post was supposed to be about work. I ended up sending back the low end Compaq 1U server we got. FYI, 1U is the size of it. Computer racks are broken down by U’s. Each standard rack has 42U. A 1U server takes up 1U of that 42. They are really small. It turns out the compaq server we bought does not have a RAID card for IDE like were were told 3 times. The were going to send me one for free, but I decided to send it back instead. Part of my reasoning is that we were going to get 2 of these. And I want to get them and see if I like them. if I do like them I want to standardize on them later on. If we got a free raid card, I would have to pay for them in the future. That would put the cost well over what I wanted to budget for these low end machines. I ended up ordering a super micro box and saved like $600 off my original quote. It is a no name brand, but we already use no name VA Linux machines, and this thing has a 3 year warrantee. I will see if they are any good.