Mobile Tech

Treo 650 Is Ordered, No Its On Backorder

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The day finally came and I ordered my Treo 650 this morning.  Now it is on back-order for 1-2 weeks.  Or in Palmone speak whenever the hell they dam well feel like shipping me something.  Why take orders for something that won’t ship for weeks?  Why don’t they start taking orders for a product when they have them in stock and ready to ship?  The small things I wonder out loud about.

Now I have to prepare my old Treo for sale.  I also need to begin getting all the applications I plan on installing ready.  Many of my current apps won’t work on the new Treo, yet.  I mentioned that last week.  Now I need to do some verification on what will be installed.  I love that I need to verify what get installed on my phone.  Sometimes I think the old days were good.  Pick up phone, have dial tone.  Simple!!!

Treo 650 Rumors

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The rumor mill is filled with buzz about the PalmOne Treo 650 GSM version coming out within a week or so. All I have to say is “took it long enough, but WoHoo!”. I will most likely pay for the full priced unlocked version. I am so far basically happy with T-Mobile. I also do not want to be forced into a 2 year deal with Cingular. They can kiss my ass over having to pay full price for any phone unless I sign a 2 year deal. So if I don’t get a subsidized phone, why do I have to sign a 1 year deal? Don’t start telling me that a 2 year deal is needed to make up the price of the phone subsidy. They do that after 1 year. Cingular is trying to lock people in since now people can move to a new carrier with their cell number by making a simple phone call. Let me give you a bit of advise Cingular. T-Mobile has kept me as a customer by NOT being pricks about their contracts. This is from a user who has had issues with them as recent as last week. I also am not happy with their data speeds of GPRS, but I don’t want to move to another carrier and get screwed with a long term contract or a company that blatantly doesn’t care about their customers choices.

To anyone that says the non-customized version of the Treo won’t work well with T-Mobile I have to say give it up. I had an unbranded Treo 270. It worked just fine on AT&T and T-Mobile. I don’t need to wait for T-Mobile to do some GPRS tweaks and stick their logo on the phone. Unbranded and unlocked versions should work fine.

Of course I bash Cingular, but I ever do want/need higher data speeds I will be using them since T-Mobile’s higher speed data network seems years away. Dam mobile providers. None of them has just what I need/want:(

&*%^@# Cell Phones

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I read something yesterday that said the majority of cell phone owners were unsatisfied with their service. That has been traditionally true for me. But I thought hey recently I have not had issues. I should not have spoken. Last night and today I have had huge issues making and receiving calls on my Treo. I think it is T-Mobile. I have had problems like this before, and it was not the phone. I am in an area with great signal and I still don’t get calls. voice mail goes off like an hour after the call was made. That is not good when people are trying to call you to tell you websites are f–ked up. Then I try to place calls and I hit send and the phone does nothing. I do that like 5-10 times before it works.

Thankfully I had the VOIP phone for outbound calls. Maybe I am thinking of switching to Cingular if they get the Treo 650 before T-Mobile. I just am not sure if their customer service is as good as T-Mobile. I like the fact that T-Mobile does not force me into a contract if I make changes to my account since I have been a customer for 3+ years now. Still debating…

Rebuilt My Laptop

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I rebuilt my work issued IBM Thinkpad T40 on Christmas eve. Gus finally returned his old laptop. Since he wiped his hard drive I took the opportunity to upgrade mine. I needed more drive space, and I really needed to wipe my laptop. I had tons of issues with it freezing up on me. It was driving me crazy.

Now that it is rebuilt (well almost) I am still having some issues. I am frustrated with windows, even though I use it almost every day. I haven’t even put on the more obscure software that I have on the Thinkpad so I could see if the system worked fine without them. The answer I got was it works better than before, but not by much.

At least I have double the drive space now. That will keep me in business with VMWare images. With all my Virtual Machines I have stored on my laptop now I still don’t have room for any MP3’s, but this is a work machine anyway:)

Pocket PC Vs. Treo 650

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Gus is trying to convince me that I should be looking at the new Pocket PC on sale from Cingular. It is branded the Siemens SX66, but it is basically the same PPC phone that HTC is making for several vendors. Gizmodo had a comparison of Audiovox’s variant of the phone for use on Sprint’s network. I am not impressed. The Treo 650 is smaller and from this review still better than the PPC. I am going to wait. Gus on the other hand may actually go buy that beast and use it. To me it looks too close in size to the HP Pocket PC that AJ got from T-Mobile a few months ago.

Patiently waiting for the Treo 650 for T-Mobile…

UPDATE: Gus got the SX66. He wants me to goto the Cingular store and check it out. I am going to go, but I think I will still wait for the 650.

A New USB Flash Drive

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I am on the market for a new (bigger and stronger built) USB 2.0 Flash drive. I have a Sandisk 512 meg one now. It is ok, but I ran out of space on it. It also does not feel well built. I like Sandisk as a company and they have many good products, but their low and mid level flash drives are not good. I don’t want to shell out double the going rate for a titanium coated high end drive of theirs that only can hold up to 512 megs. I am looking at the Lexar Jumpdrive Secure. They look secure. They have encrypted volumes that work on both Mac & PC’s. They also support up to 1gig. What is not to like about them? For $100 I will give them a try.

Zire 72

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I finally broke down and bought a Palmone Zire 72.  I have eyed it since August.  I had it for a day now.  it rocks, but I am returning it.  I found that I love the screen, I love the bluetooth, the camera, etc.  The simple fact is I want to try using a smaller phone, but always end up wishing I had my Treo with me.  Having my SE T610 in my pocket was a dream.  I didn’t realize it was there 90% of the time.  of course I wanted to check a contact or check a task and I couldn’t:(

So the impulse buy is going back (hopefully).  According to Best Buy’s return policy they should take it with no problems.  I am taking it back tomorrow.  I will take my eBay sales money (how else did you think I was paying for a technically unneeded piece of tech) and save it for something else.

Scott Math

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Ask Jayson, I have a weird way of justifying buying stuff. It is a combination of impulse buying, ebay selling, and sometimes disposable income to throw around. Of course having a girlfriend that sucked down the disposable income didn’t really slow me down much. That is something to think about later.

I buy stuff, use it for a while and the sell it. By selling stuff, I can justify buying newer versions of said stuff, or different stuff. Take my computer I just got. I didn’t go out and blow a ton of money on a computer (well I did, but read on). I had half the purchase price set aside in what I like to call my Tech/Vacation slush fund. it is for impulse buys and such. I put gift money, cash earned from selling gear, etc into that account. When I want a big ticket item I go there to spend it. So I paid for half of the computer with that money. Then I decided to sell a bunch of other stuff on ebay to pay for the rest of the computer. When all is said and done, I would not have spent any money out of pocket for the computer. Jayson laugh’s at my theory. My friend rich scratches his head with confusion, but it works. All I know is that I get new gear with little or no expense out of pocket. Soon I will sell my powerbook and pick up a new one. Only having spent a few hundred dollars on the difference between the used computer sale price and the new machine.

That my friends is how you can keep up on the new technology. Of course I only do this for some items. Much of my crap is not recycled allot. I have the same 4 year old tv I have had. my stereo is not getting any newer, etc. But how good a stereo do you need in an apartment?

If you are reading this post going, "hey that makes sence, how can I do that also"? You are crazy. If you are reading this post going "man Scott is crazy". You would be correct. I am not normal. I never said I was. All I can say is eBay is addictive…

Saw The Razr Today

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Wednesday Jayson and I went to the Cingular store to check out the new Motorola Razr. It was really cool. Super slim, and all metal. The screen was almost as big as my Treo’s. The downside, it was $500 with a contract. I have been pondering moving to Cingular, but that price was way too much for me right now. Without a contract it was $600. If the price came down to $300 maybe I would check it out. I wasn’t going to buy a plane old phone that is more than what I paid for my PDA/Phone. that is just crazy.

Gus was upset that I didn’t wait to goto the store with him. He seemed jealous that I went with Jayson. I told him if he was a good boy I would goto the store with him too!!!

Rumor New Treo’s Oct. 25

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I have read on many tech sites that the new Treo will be out in late October. I am saving up to get it once it is out for T-Mobile. If the last Treo release is any indication of how long I will have to wait for T-Mobile to release the Treo, I have until March to wait for it. Lets hope PalmOne buying handspring has fixed the REALLY long wait times for the phone to be released.

Several people in my office have the Treo 600’s and a few of us already plan on upgrading when the new one comes out. Jayson on the other hand is hoping to pick one of our 600’s up on the cheap when we upgrade.