Category: Computers/Internet

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Mobile goals:

  • Real web access.
  • Reduce number of gadgets if possible (combine with camera and/or music player)

Limitations:

  • Still have a year left with T-Mobile.
  • Not thrilled about AT&T, but resistance is softening.
  • No phone in existence has the camera capability I want.

Options:

  • Back in early summer I was looking at the Shadow or Wing from T-Mobile. Windows Mobile, so I could put Opera Mobile on it. Not 3G, don’t think they have WiFi, so they’d be slow. G1 sort of makes them obsolete (see below).
  • iPhone. Safari and 3rd-party apps. High speed: both 3G-capable and WiFi-capable. Requires switching to AT&T. Not quite big enough to replace my iPod yet (I’ll look again when they hit 32 GB). $200 + $130/month for the cheapest 2-phone plan, plus my wife would need a new phone whether she wanted it or not.
  • iPod Touch. Basically an iPhone without the phone. Big enough to replace my current iPod, plus give me Safari, but only at WiFi hotspots. (Would be perfect for Comic-Con!) But I’d need the 32 GB model, which is $500.
  • G1 from T-Mobile. Comparable to what I’d actually use on the iPhone, won’t require switching providers. Again, 3G and WiFi — and it looks like 3G coverage where we live is better than the standard coverage. AM is expandable via MicroSD card. Music player is MP3 only. $180 + $75/month (assuming I can just add a $25 data plan to our current 2-line plan.

That G1 is looking pretty good. I’m not prepared to be an early adopter, but it might be worth taking a serious look at it in a few months.

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Last month I finally got around to a major rebuild of my computer, something I’d been meaning to do since May when I traced some display problems to the motherboard*. I finally bit the bullet when I started seeing signs of disk errors, and dragged the machine into the present day. (64-bit, dual-core, 2 GB RAM, SATA drive, faster everything.)

Then I discovered that some of the display problems actually were the fault of the monitor.

So I went out and bought a new monitor while Fedora was installing, and I took the opportunity to go widescreen.

My criteria were simple: The resolution and physical size both had to be as big or bigger than the old one (17″, 1280×1024), and it had to be under $300. That meant at minimum a 22″ display at 1680×1050, and I found a Hannspree 229HBP for about $190.

There was a Dell right next to it, same size & resolution and comparable specs, and the Best Buy employee had been talking both of them up. The Dell was on sale for $290. I asked what the difference was. He thought about it for a few seconds. “Well, this one [the Hannspree] does run a little bit hotter. But mostly it’s just the name.” Thank you, Best Buy employee whose name I’ve forgotten, for helping me save $100.

The biggest difference, aside from actually having room to show both the toolbox and document windows on GIMP, is that I don’t maximize windows anymore. Not that I maximized apps that often before, not counting the stuck-in-low-res period. I’ll occasionally run a video or slideshow fullscreen, but the only program I regularly maximize is my email client, and that’s because I can put it in three-column mode (Folder tree on the left, mailbox listing in the middle, message content on the right).

Something to watch out for: At first I left the monitor off-center, because there wasn’t enough room on my desk for it. I figured as long as I worked mostly on the right part of the screen I’d be fine. But I ended up having neck problems shortly afterward, and Katie suggested I check the placement of the monitor. I shifted things around so I could center it, then set it on top of an Amazon box to raise it a couple of inches, and the sore neck cleared up.

I’ve only run into two problems (not counting the placement): There’s one dead pixel, but it’s off in a corner so that it’s not really an issue. I almost didn’t notice it at first when I was still setting things up, because the default GNOME layout has a Mac-style ever-present menu bar, and it falls right on the edge. Usually it ends up either on the edge of a window border or lost in the wallpaper noise.

The other problem: the built-in speakers pretty much suck, but I had external speakers already, so again: no big deal.

* It stopped displaying any resolution past 1024×768. I could tell it wasn’t the monitor because it was perfectly happy to show another computer at 1280×1024. And not the drivers or OS because I had the same problem booting from a LiveCD. And not the video card because plugging in another one didn’t solve it. This was particularly frustrating since it was an LCD monitor, so running at less than native resolution made everything blurry. Still, I put off replacing the mobo for months since it’s such a pain to do.

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My desktop computer has been a bit flaky for a few months now. Well, more than that. There’s the problem where it won’t display anything in plain-text mode, but that’s not really a big deal. It was when it stopped running anything higher than 1024×768 that I started getting annoyed.

That turned out, oddly enough, to not be the video card. And not the monitor, since I could display higher resolution from the Windows box perfectly fine. And not my OS, since running a live CD had the same problem.

So I figured it was a motherboard issue. Fine, I’ll upgrade. Eventually. Wait ~4 months, and I’m starting to notice data errors on the hard drive. Great.

You know that old saying about how any project requires at least 3 trips to the hardware store? It applies to computers, too.

I finally got around to looking for a decent mobo/CPU/RAM combo, and a new hard drive. Ordered online. Arrived yesterday. Ran backup last night.

Today I dismantled everything, hampered by the fact that I could not find the box that has all the case components (faceplates so I could remove the ZIP drive which I haven’t used in 3 years, etc.), though I did eventually find the screws. After I installed the motherboard, I started plugging in connectors… only to discover that the power supply didn’t have the right kind of connector.

Off to Fry’s to get a new power supply, after stopping at storage to see if I could find that box with faceplates and stuff. No luck, and power supplies are astonishingly expensive, though I found one that fit my specs and was on sale and had a rebate, so that worked out. (Some of them are 1000-watt monstrosities that cost as much as a cheap computer, and in the words of another customer, “look like they should be in a Chevy.”)

Came back, hooked everything up, moved it back into the bedroom to hook everything up…and couldn’t go into the BIOS to set the boot device. After messing around a bit, determined that the text-mode problem, at least, actually was the monitor. So I’m borrowing Katie’s monitor while I install an actual 64-bit OS. Once it’s at the point where I can let it sit for a while, I’m going to run out to Best Buy for a new monitor. I suspect the resolution problem is different, but at this point I’m no longer inclined to suffer through it.

Still, it’s worth the upgrade (assuming, of course, that everything continues to work once I close up the case), since the old system was single-core, 32-bit, and ran on an IDE drive, and the new system is dual-core, 64-bit, will have more memory, a faster bus, a SATA drive, etc. This should be much faster.

Once it’s done, anyway.

Originally posted at LiveJournal.

Current Mood: 😡frustrated

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A word to the wise for anyone planning to set up paperless billing: make sure the notices go to the right email address.

Last night, while paying bills, I realized I hadn’t seen a bill for our internet access in quite a while, and noticed that my bank showed the last payment had been sent in June. That didn’t look promising.

I logged onto the U-Verse website, and sure enough, our account was set for paperless billing. I hadn’t gotten the bills because they were being sent to an AT&T address which had been created as part of the setup process, but which I’d never used. So I paid the overdue bill, set up auto-pay so I wouldn’t have to worry about it again, and then set about making sure I’d actually get the statements. I thought about changing the address listed on the U-Verse profile, or forwarding it to my regular address, but settled on just setting up POP access to the account.

The weird thing is, I’m not entirely sure how we ended up with paperless billing. My filing system’s a mess right now, but I distinctly remember getting one bill on paper. (We signed up in May, as soon as we moved in.) I can’t have marked a checkbox on the bill, though, because I paid it through my bank’s website, not by check. My best guess is that I chose it during the setup process and forgot, and they just sent the first bill on paper.

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I mentioned a few weeks ago that I want some sort of mobile internet access for San Diego Comic-Con so that I can post at least some stuff from the convention itself, instead of waiting until I get back to the hotel. Since the con has never offered wi-fi (except, IIRC, in the press room — which I just realized I could have used last year, since I got a press badge for CBR/Comics Should Be Good), I was looking into phone-based solutions.

Phoning it In

I experimented with post-by-email (not sufficient), with post-through-Flickr (slightly better, but only really suitable for image posts and still missing things like, oh, titles), and with using WPhone to provide a stripped-down admin interface in the hopes that my phone’s built-in browser could handle it (no such luck). No, I was clearly going to need a better web browser — one way or another.

Yesterday I went into a T-Mobile store, partly to look at the smartphones they had, and partly to ask about what data plan would allow me to use Opera Mini on my current phone. The guy tried to sell me a Blackberry, but I have to admit the Wing looked really nice, if expensive.

Opera Mini - The free Web browser for nearly any phoneI asked about getting the Internet plan, and while the sales clerk was familiar with Opera Mini (he uses it on his own Blackberry), he was convinced it wouldn’t run on my RAZR V3t. I’d used an early version of it during a brief window in which T-Mobile allowed access even for phones with the T-Zones plan.  But he seemed convinced there would be no point, so I walked out without having changed anything.  30 seconds of Internet searching reveals that yes, Opera Mini is in fact known to work on the RAZR V3t.

Free WiFi

Today, the news started making the rounds that the con will have free wi-fi everywhere except the exhibit hall itself, sponsored by the film, Eagle Eye. (Which, now that I think about it, is oddly appropriate and somewhat disturbing.)   This is a huge relief, and makes the phone access much less critical. Though it would still be nice…

Sure, it’s going to be a very busy network. But I figure I’ll type things up in TextWrangler and load up the web just long enough to post. Gears will cut down on the amount of bandwidth needed for the admin interface.  And I’ll save any serious emailing or forum visits for the hotel room.  Actually, I’ll probably stay off the forums during most of the con, unless I have the opportunity to post “Hey, look what I just found out!”