First of all, this is a dupe from Sunday. Nothing new to see here. Move along. These aren't the droids you're looking for.
Secondly (and more important): IE for the Mac was an entirely different product, with a different codebase and a different rendering engine. While IE for Mac did have an occasional vulnerability (typically patched pretty quickly), it was at the time a more standards-compliant browser than its distant Windows cousin.
Unlike IE for Windows, IE for Mac was simply an application. No low-level stuff, no rendering engine used by the system (like IE Win and, for that matter, Safari/WebKit for the Mac), no ActiveX compatibility, no nothing. Other than the lack of pop-up blocking (which wasn't a common feature in any browser yet), IE was a pretty decent product. Most Mac users used IE, and were pretty happy with it - it had versions for the old Mac OS, and a spiffy Carbonized version for OS X). When Apple announced Safari, though, the writing was on the wall for IE Mac - why keep building a browser that earns no revenue and doesn't even help draw users to other Microsoft products? Just to get a few more MSN pageviews by people too lazy to change their default homepage?
The last time I resigned was in 1998 - I'd worked at the company for six years, and was in charge of all their tech. I offered nearly two months' notice (five weeks prior to an already-scheduled vacation, then another week-plus afterwards two wrap up). It was gratefully accepted, and I spent the time working harder than ever and training the person who was moved into my spot. I'm still on good terms with the company, and have come in several times to provide services since going into consulting last year.
The company I left them to go to laid me off after five-plus years, as part of a massive downsizing following a merger (my department of four will be down to a single person after the first of the year). Since I was IT management, policy of the company who had acquired us was that management would be terminated immediately and escorted out. Which, in addition to the irony, was amusing as it left them in tough straits for a while (I tried to make sure people knew how to do stuff, but there were still plenty of details where I was the only person who really knew them), and simply got me an extra two months of paid vacation (60 days was the layoff notice time for all other employees - including IT worker bees).
I wound up telling them all the things they needed to change afterwards to lock me out correctly. The only thing that actually annoyed me was that HR initially was going to terminate my benefits immediately - I pointed out, correctly, that I was really under a 60-day notice according to policy. It wasn't my fault that they didn't wish to use my services during those 60 days. After some quick consultation, they said "yep - you're right", and that was taken care of.
A year later I came back there as a consultant to help them with some DR-related stuff. Charged for every minute of my time, too.
I've handled terminations for some of my clients (and employers) over the years as well, of course - the simple way to do it for me is just implement whatever the policy is. Most of my clients are smaller companies - in those cases, the owner calls me up and tells me what to do, and how quickly they plan to do it. I don't enjoy that part of the job, but it's not about enjoyment - it's about what the customer needs done.
Yes, it would be better if this (and other flaws) never occurred. The main point here, though, is that Apple typically does a pretty good job of finding and addressing these flaws when they occur, and in a timely fashion. Microsoft does so in many cases, but in others they sit on the problem long enough that there's an opportunity for crackers to find and exploit it.
So for the most part Apple's methods work well. Of course zero bugs is a good target, but prompt identification and dissemination of fixes is reasonable. It's also pretty tough to craft an exploit that will simply zap Mac users and then get to them before Apple has an opportunity to get the patch out.
One thing Apple should do, though, is make Software Update a bigger part of the Guided Tour, and set it to default to check daily and download critical fixes automatically (right now, it just notifies as default behavior, and checks weekly). I've noticed users who simply ignore Software Update's dialog boxes because they don't understand what it's doing.
I bought my old Olympus digital camera from Abe's about 5 years back, and I was initially a little nervous about it, given the rep that most of the hole-in-the-wall photo stores have. However, other than a slightly higher than initially quoted shipping cost, everything worked out just fine. Even with the higher shipping, the price was still better than I could find locally by a large margin, and the camera was a US model with all the expected accessories in the box.
It's scary when you have a decent experience with a store and consider it a novelty...
That's kind of what part of my point was - I use and support all the platforms as part of my work, and I've used Linux literally for over a decade (I remember when Bob Young was showing up at computer flea markets with copied Yggdrasil CD's, to really date myself badly). I've used Linux personally, as a desktop and as a server, and I still do. I like the freedom to tinker and the ability to tweak it to my needs, regardless of distro.
The problem is that I'm not the market that has to be happy in order for Linux to be a truly viable desktop OS. Joe User is the market, and Joe User has a lot less expertise than virtually anyone who ever has posted on Slashdot. People lose track of the fact that we're not representative of the marketplace. And even.5% of marketshare is fine as far as I'm concerned - I'm not going to stop using a Linux desktop (though I'm posting this from my iMac G5) just because it's not a "mainstream desktop". But so many of these articles and posts are coming from a "Linux world domination" perspective that there's just no real thought towards the reality.
For the right people, Linux is an awesome desktop OS. Problem is, we're the right people, and there's just not enough of us. When Linux becomes something that can just be installed and used, easily, with all the Little Things done right, then it'll get serious traction. Heck, as another poster on this thread commented, the reason Apple gets to work on eye candy is because they already figured out the Little Things. When a Linux distro gets that right, instant traction. And GNOME versus KDE is not the way to get there.
Posters here on Slashdot and all over always wonder why Linux hasn't made more of an impact in the desktop world. Well, this is the biggest reason (or representative of it, at least). In the Windows world or even the MacOS world, no regular users give a hoot what window manager they run. They don't care which packaging system they use, either. All they know is that they buy the OS and it works, and that programs written for the platform just work. And if they go out and buy an off-the-shelf program for their computer, it just installs. The underlying technology is irrelevant. Windows users don't really care about the difference between InstallShield and.MSI files - they just know that they double-click on SETUP.EXE or INSTALL.EXE and it installs the darned program. Mac users know they either double-click to run an installer or just drag a program into their Applications folder. And yes, I know there's ways to run X11 apps on both Mac and Windows, but basically the user doesn't have to know the difference between, for instance, Carbon apps and Cocoa apps. They don't choose between competing windowing systems. They just use the computer.
Linux systems are more or less founded on choice. Which is a great thing, but has no relationship with user-friendliness or consistency. Remember part of the original motivation behind GNOME - it was because a crew of folks was unhappy with the QT licensing. So they reinvented the wheel to deal with it. That's what's great about both Open Source and Free software, but it's also why a wide-open platform is not going to gain mainstream use anytime in the foreseeable future. Even if either KDE or GNOME shut down all their development efforts tomorrow, someone would pick up the dropped torch and keep it going. And then competing vendors would still have to pick one or the other.
The day Linux desktops start spreading is the day all the big projects decide they need to focus less on eye candy and more on making the system as simple, consistent, and reliable as possible. Kind of like OS X.
You can almost tell that ex-Apple folks designed it. Granted, they've addressed the most glaring design flaws (by increasing RAM and adding USB 2.0), but the deal-killer is still the battery life. Unless they can come up with better battery performance (I think it needs 5-6 hours) at a lower pricepoint, OQO isn't going too much farther, I suspect.
And yeah, a Linux/OpenOffice version of this would be pretty slick. It'd cut their licensing costs, too.
Re:After a long career, I now find myself... Happy
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Pay vs. Happiness
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· Score: 1
For a while after I got laid off, I kept COBRA coverage (the company paid for the first two months of it). I was considering a plan through my local chamber of commerce, but then my wife went back to work - she'd taken the first 2 1/3 years off after our son was born. Her job provides the insurance - though preschool is almost as expensive as insurance would be.
But the way we have things now, I work mainly Monday-Friday, she works Tuesday-Saturday (her job is one that has her on the road in the area servicing retailers). So we each have a solo day with our son, and then one day together as well. That keeps the preschool cost down a little, and gives us more quality time.
Were I single, I'd be able to afford individual insurance without too much effort, but family coverage is pricey. There's no real price difference for one child families versus multi-child families on most plans I've seen.
After a long career, I now find myself... Happy!
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Pay vs. Happiness
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· Score: 5, Informative
Basically, here's the roughly-a-paragraph version of my career, followed by what I do now:
Started mid-'80s with minor tech jobs and tech/sales jobs for crappy, now out-of-business retailers (Egghead, ComputerTown, etc.). Got hired by a customer to be their admin, spent 6 utterly frantic, insane years there. I worked at all hours of the day and night, dealt with issues constantly, but I was well-paid, respected, and treated well. I loved it. Went to another job as IT manager for an insurance company, paid a lot more money. Loved it and the people, until we were sucked in by a much bigger insurance company. Their strategic plan for us involved firing half the employees and turning it into a branch office. Lost my job there as one of the first overboard (I was management, after all) in mid-'03 after 5+ years - the first 3 solving problems and running operations, the last two having conference calls with my new boss in Minnesota.
After that thoroughly disheartening experience with The System, I decided to give being my own boss a shot. I hung out my shingle in the spring of '04, and managed to eke out a living for the first year. Now, I wouldn't say my success is assured and I'm not making the kind of bank I used to, but I'm really busy, making a good living, and I love my job. My customers are actually grateful for my work, and they trust me to help steer them in the right directions. The experience I had is a real asset for them. And even if this doesn't work out in the long term, I've learned a lot about myself, learned a lot about business, and gotten the chance to actually use all the tech skills I've piled up over the years instead of rotting from the neck up as a PHB.
The downside? Some weeks I can't find enough hours in the week to do everything, some weeks I hear crickets chirping when I sit in my office. And today was supposed to be a family day to go to a museum with my wife and son, but instead I had to finish a proposal in the morning, and then get called in to a customer about a half-hour from here to fix a server whose power supply had failed (installed before my time and soon to be replaced). But you know - it wasn't too bad. Because the proposal is for a nice bit of business, and that didn't take too long. And the other customer knew that I was giving up my personal time to help and they genuinely appreciated it. And appreciation is something that is often sorely lacking in the salaried, 9-5 world. Crises like that don't happen often, and it just happened to be today.
So basically I'm saying that if you want to be happy, consider working for yourself. It's a much better life (at least for me), and it's nice to at least have some measure of control again. The worst case is you'll learn something in failing. The best case is you get to really be in charge of your career.
I know a show they can do!
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YahooTV
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· Score: 4, Funny
How about they make a show about a bunch of Gen X people in a big house with a history on the coast in California. Each person can represent a "type", and they can even have blog entries combined with the media, talking about the subtext of each episode. It's a soap opera, updated for the web! To make it even cooler, they could have a dog that sort of "comes with the house" as the mascot, and have the dog provide blog entries that give us insights on the characters.
I even have a good name for it. They could call it "The Spot". Does that sound pretty cool and original?
Then, they could follow that monster hit up with a show about a college grad trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life. The gimmick here can be that she has a camera in every room of her house, that can follow her everywhere and watch her doing everything. And she can blog about her life, too. I think we could call that one "Jennicam" - I think nobody's used that name before!
After all, why re-do "The Daily Show" when there are so many new, original ideas to develop?
The cloners only made PowerPC-based Macs, not 680x0. Plus they had to buy their chipsets from Apple as well - they just tweaked them for higher performance than Apple was willing to do. Apple still sold the vast majority of MacOS systems (I think the total clone marketshare never exceeded 15% or so), but the thing that bit Apple about it was that that clone market (especially PowerComputing and Umax) was taking the highest-end part of the Mac market. And that was where the biggest profits were.
Jobs used the G3 transition and the accompanying move to "MacOS 8" (which was really just 7 with a few things bolted on, not the "Copland" 8 that was originally planned in the licensing deals) to freeze out clone licenses and get the market back. A nasty trick, but it worked.
I still remember Macworld Boston that year (1997), when everybody but Apple announced G3-based desktops shipping RSN (as soon as the licensing details were worked out with Apple). Of course, that never happened, so the tiny handful of those machines that ever made it into customer hands are probably collectors' items. Afterwards, Apple came out with their thoroughly underwhelming G3 desktop, and continued the death spiral...
Until the iMac was unveiled in 1998, and all of a sudden Apple started to get their mojo back. The rest is history.
When Apple announced the switch, the roadmap has the transition beginning with "value" Macs and portables in mid-2006, with the rest of the line transitioning over the next year.
Basically, they will replace G4-based systems first (eMac, mini, portables), since the G4 Macs are currently the most clock-speed restrained. G4 processors are pretty low on power consumption but top out under 2GHz.
The G5 desktop roadmap is good enough to keep going for a while, with small clock speed improvements and a probable move to dual-core G5 chips. Apple also makes their highest profits on the G5 desktops, so they've got an incentive to push that as gently as possible. Look for the switch there to be right to dual-core x86-64 processors. Right now, G5 processors are still competitive with their x86 counterparts, so that's the other reason to concentrate on the G4 models first.
Hopefully they'll change Xserve last. Those things are pretty darned slick as-is.
Vista is currently due at the end of 2006 (about when Apple plans to release Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard"), so Apple should be well into the transition by then. If Vista slips any further, Apple could even be most of the way through the whole process.
Who among us in their right mind didn't expect this possibility? The whole idea of these utterly generic Intel PowerMacs were for them to be cheap development preview systems. ADC members who wanted to test and develop ahead of time could either build Universal Binaries on PPC (and cross their fingers), or actually buy one of these and test while the OS is being ported and finalized.
The point here being, these are not production Intel Macs! Why would you expect to have everything Just Work (which, of course, is the whole reason many folks buy Macs in the first place) - heck, you can only get one of these systems if you're an ADC member! Remember, Apple said that OS X would not work on a generic Intel PC, only on Apple's gear. So now it's starting to come true? Wah!
As for the breakage between 10.4.1 Intel and 10.4.2 Intel - Get used to it - this may well happen a few more times before live product ships next year. I don't think any legit developers are worried about it. Only the pirates. Right now is the "build, test, and learn" phase, anyhow.
Oh no! The Socialist Deputy Mayor of a French city is making demands! What will we do now???
Seriously, HP sucks, we all know HP sucks, and this is yet another round of cuts in the death spiral. That said, if it were, say, Chirac ranting about HP that would be one thing. The folks at the top in a country can make things pretty difficult for you if they want - it's generally good to keep them appeased at least to some degree. But who on earth cares what some obscure Deputy Mayor thinks about anything other than the Mayor's lunch order? Why does every minor insignificant politician have to weigh in on this crap? Do they really think that their constituents believe they have influence over giant multinational corporations?
Even if this Destot fellow had some clout, HP's response would likely be "fine - how about we take all the jobs away, then... And move them to another country!"
I actually mean this - I hate pointless layoffs (and was the victim of one at a previous company), but I hate grandstanding local political hacks even more.
it's just really unlikely - and the consequences of Mac malware would probably be a lot less severe. The attack surface of a default Mac OS X installation is pretty darned small. There are no services open, no file sharing, no open ports, and no root user. The user's admin password is required to install anything that touches critical parts of the filesystem, and Apple is pretty good about patching potential vulnerabilities and making sure that the client Macs get them.
I've seen and heard of instances where OS X Server installs have gotten owned - it's not common but it does sometimes happen. Unlike Client, Server does give you services to use and admins are traditionally less eager to patch a running server - so updates may not be applied as quickly.
But as of right now, Mac OS X is fundamentally far more secure than Windows - period. And although someone _could_ write malware for OS X, as long as Windows dominates the universe they are exceedingly unlikely to try. And the dumb user is much better protected on the Mac than they are on Windows still - even with all the post-SP2 improvements to default policy and the much better 2003 Server.
Now that I tossed that statement out there, I'd like to clarify it some. I do feel that most certifications are useless. With few exceptions, they don't really reflect any real-world ability to perform the job, just that you've been able to demonstrate a base level of knowledge regarding a technology.
With that said, there are certifications that are usually indicative of a real skillset. Cisco's certifications are generally useful. Many certs in the security field are relevant. The old Novell CNE and Microsoft MCSE certs are next to useless. In my own work, the only certification I have ever bothered holding is the entry-level Apple Certified Help Desk cert, and that's just because a certification was required for entry into Apple's consultant program (which has been extremely valuable for my business). Even that certification didn't require any coursework - when I read the description, I signed up for the test and took it a couple of days later, sight unseen. And passed it in about 15 minutes.
That doesn't mean I'm an übergod of Mac OS X, it just means I knew the material well enough to pass the test easily. My experience is far more relevant.
When, in my prior work life, I was a corporate IT manager, I did not really use certs as a hiring criteria. I did look to see if they were present, but I was much more interested in reality. The ironic part was that the first IT person on my staff to take advantage of our company's (then) generous education benefits to get certified left almost immediately upon getting the MCSE cert to go work at a dot-com for ludicrous money.
Times were different then...
The biggest problem with certifications is that they usually provide an inflated view of a person's skills. But the bigger the organization, the less likely it is that you'll find people who have the time to look through the alphabet soup and can see the real skill overview. I don't know of any good solution, especially in the lower-to-mid level jobs.
When he was two, I took an old iMac G3 we had and set it up with a couple of preschooler games. He grasped the mouse idea very quickly, and now at 3 1/4, he's actually pretty proficient with his Mac. I've set him up with the Simple Finder in Mac OS X 10.3, and I made.dmg files from all the games that require the CD to be inserted - and then set them up to auto-mount. I covered the CD slot with a shield of duct tape, since he can't always resist the impulse to put stuff in there (and disassembling the iMac G3 is a pain). Besides that, I set up his Applications folder with only the apps we want him to have access to.
The whole thing is sitting on a table in his playroom - when he feels like using it he knows how to turn it on, and when he's done he knows how to put the iMac back to sleep.
Then again, he also knows how to operate our TiVo, too.
Seriously, though, depending on the age of a child there's a lot of different ways to go about this. I already had the Mac available - otherwise, I could have hooked up a PC or something. We don't give him any web access yet, of course - not much point to that when you can't even really read yet. But overall he's a surprisingly skilled user for his age and I figure he'll kick me out of my job by the time he can drive. That gives me 13 more years, though, so I'll make the best of it while I can!
One other related thing I've noted is that the quality of preschooler software is vastly improved from what it used to be. Requiring the CD to be present, though, is pretty stupid - as good at technology as some kids can be I have yet to see any who know how to take care of either a CD or a DVD. I rip and copy all his DVDs and just run off another dupe when he ruins the first dupe.
That's supposed to be the case, and if it is still so then this ruling is a Good Thing. Basically, how I understand it (and I may very well be wrong), is that an ILEC is no longer obligated to sublet their ISP services to other companies. For instance, in a number of cities Earthlink sells a repackaged version of the ILEC's services - that will no longer be required. However, they still have to offer access to the dry copper in order to let CLECs operate. Covad, for instance, is a CLEC. As are most DSL providers.
What I'm a lot less clear on is whether "line sharing" will still be OK - right now, for instance, my Speakeasy service is operating split on my Verizon line, via equipment co-located at my CO. Will that state of affairs continue, or will Speakeasy have to lease a wire from Verizon in it's entirety? The other variable will be what happens when Verizon gets FIOS deployed - will there still be a place for the CLECs at that point?
I suspect so, because it helps Verizon politically to say "look - we've got competition!".
We (meaning the US government/Russia/ESA), still want to use humans in LEO, and we want to keep the ISS in operation for the foreseeable future. The Space Shuttle has been a reasonably effective way to do that, but has shown it's age and the limitations of the "reusable space plane" approach. If it costs the same or more money to launch the Shuttle than it does to send "traditional" rockets into LEO, why not use traditional rockets instead?
Not only that, but this plan seems to recycle the best parts of the Shuttle design, increase human safety, and probably lower operational costs as well. Plus the cargo configuration can hoist more than the Shuttle - a lot more.
Politically, the US government (operator of the Shuttle), is not really willing to accept that flying the Shuttle is inherently dangerous, so NASA operates under very rigid safety guidelines. Then again, we've seen on TV what happens when those guidelines get bent too far (twice so far), and when you see astronauts die on TV it tends to dull the political appetite for risk.
So I think this plan that's coming out is a good one, given that we as a society do not seem to be willing to accept that going to space is risky, rockets can and will fail, and people can and will likely be killed on occasion in the process. They seem to be focusing on simply using the safest technologies from today's designs and re-engineering them to reduce the risk of failure and the likelihood of a catastrophic incident in the event of a failure. With a cost lower than today's system. A good engineering and political solution to what is basically a political problem.
Yeah, it's a nice mouse. Kind of slick, well-designed, and typical Apple kit. But it changes absolutely nothing about the Mac at all.
Apple still is including good old one-button mice with Macs by default. Mac OS X is still designed to only require one button in order to do everything - two buttons give you nice options but aren't necessary. So that's no different. Mac OS X has always supported multi-button mice and scroll wheels, as well. I use a Microsoft wheel mouse with my iMac G5 at the office, a Logitech wireless keyboard/mouse combo with my home iMac, and a Kensington Bluetooth mouse with my PowerBook. I prefer two buttons. My wife and son, on the other hand, both prefer and use Apple one-button mice with their Macs, and my wife also has a Compaq that came from her office (she works out of the house) - she hates the two-button mice.
Really, the only thing that's changed here is now Apple will gobble up some sales dollars that previously went to the aftermarket mouse makers. Assuming that a typical "decent" mouse sells for around $30, that's a nice little extra bit of revenue for Apple. And the name is kinda cool.
I know it won't make much difference for me, and probably not for my clients, either. A Mac is a computer that happens to run the Mac OS. And as long as the computer it runs on is priced competitively and performs equivalently to Windows systems in the same market segment, there's no real reason not to buy it (assuming, of course, that you want the Mac OS).
Sure, I really like Apple's industrial engineering, and the build quality of their kit compared to the typical Wintel box is way better, but I fully expect that Apple will keep on doing their own thing with the hardware - it's just that instead of buying PPC chips from IBM and Freescale (and designing their own chipsets), they'll be buying Pentiums and support chipsets from Intel. I expect that the rest of the board design and engineering will continue to be done by Apple, partly because they already have those skills in-house, and partly because this allows them to keep differentiating themselves from "regular" PC vendors.
But as long as Apple systems offer what I want, I'll keep using them. Regardless of whether they use Intel processors or whether they have DRM support in the chipset.
I use them for home, and I'd use them at my office if I could get anything other than IDSL from them at my location (I have an office in a huge old industrial complex where only Verizon and ISPs with facilities in the building can offer DSL). I've sent several of my friends and customers to Speakeasy with high confidence, and though I also wish they'd charge a little less, it's nice to have a DSL ISP that's still in business. That's pretty rare.
(I should know, before Speakeasy I was a Flashcom customer and then a DirecTV DSL user)
I did have a lot of trouble with them in early 2003, when I first signed up after DirecTV DSL chomped. The first time was really Verizon's fault - they screwed up the line release. The second time, though, was in May '93 when Speakeasy started switching users away from Covad's backbone - I was down for nearly two weeks and nearly walked away then.
To their credit, service since then has been utterly impeccable. The longest unscheduled outage I've had has been about 5-10 minutes or so, and never during the day. Speeds to most locations is very good as well. The important thing to me at this point is that Speakeasy tries to take care of customers properly, and even if they goof once in a while the fact that they make an effort is way better than most of the giants will do.
I think it depends on what variation on the Media Works/Media Net package you have. I just have Media Net Unlimited, which includes unlimited data but caps on text and MMS (neither of which I use). According to my plan and bill summaries, it's not an issue.
But it is pretty easy to confuse the various plans when you sign up. Media Works originally had an unlimited option that had no cap on regular data usage - that was how I used my old T637 as a wireless modem on occasion (before I switched to Verizon for that service - see my comments on the EV-DO story here for more details). I dropped Media Works Unlimited when I bought the Verizon card, but for my purposes the Media Net Unlimited does the same thing.
I've had mine for a couple of weeks, and I like it. A lot. I had a lot of trouble with it the first couple of days, until I weeded out all the incompatible cruft that had accumulated from all the software I had on my old Palm Tungsten T (which in turn had everything from prior Palms I've owned over the years). A few warm reboots and removed apps/patches later, it's very solid, only requiring one reset over the last week (an AvantGo sync locked it up). That, to me, is about average for a Palm nowadays, so the Treo is typical. Yes, it's bigger than my Sony Ericsson T637 was, but not ridiculously so. And it's smaller than any other phone I've seen with a QWERTY keyboard.
In its current version (I have the Cingular model, with the current non-updated firmware from them), there's some Bluetooth weirdness when using multiple devices with it. I mainly just use it wirelessly with my headset, so it's not a big deal right now. Battery life has been very good - a full day of use with no charging (an hour or two of phone time, and about an hour's worth of PDA use) will only take the charge down to about 80%. That's almost as good as my old phone. The speakerphone is pretty good, and even acceptable in the car. I do wish I still had Graffiti readily available, and I'm looking forward to getting more free space after the update finally comes out from Cingular, but overall I'm very pleased.
Note to Cingular users: if you buy the phone directly from Palm or a third-party without a service plan as an upgrade, you can save some money. With your old phone, add their $20/month Media Net unlimited plan, and then just move your SIM into the Treo when it arrives. You now have the exact same plan that would cost you $40 if you signed the Treo up directly.
The footprint of your typical wireless hotspot is a couple of hundred feet, at maximum. And there's not reason to expect that, outside of a few areas in some towns (like Newbury Street in Boston, or Essex Street in downtown Salem MA) that have sponsored WiFi meshes, you will have continuous service. So you're very limited as to where you have access.
With EV-DO, your hotspot is the entire metropolitan area. And you still get better than modem speeds even in places where the higher speeds are unavailable. Overall, if you can get a signal on a Verizon phone, you can get at least some form of data connectivity.
I've used one of the Audiovox cards with my PowerBook here in the Boston area since November, and it Just Works. Very good speeds and service everywhere I need to go.
If you never go too far away from the neighborhood coffee shop then by all means, stick to WiFi hotspots. But if you spend a lot of time on the road (I'm an IT freelancer and I don't have a lot of time to spend in my office), it's great. For what I do, using 3G lets me do customer work whenever the customer needs it. No waiting=happier customers=I get to keep making a living doing this.
Heck, I'm not the only category of person who benefits from this. Anybody who spends a lot of time on the road can potentially use it. Granted, if a WiFi signal is available I'll use that first, but much of the time it isn't. And when you get a call from a customer who needs you to initiate a database rebuild for them right now while you're driving up the coast towards an appointment in Gloucester (true incident from earlier this week), it's easy to pull over, whip out the PowerBook, and use the EV-DO connection to VPN into their network, Timbuktu into their server, and get the task done. I had to pull over for 5 minutes for that, and if all I had was WiFi I couldn't have done it.
Slashdot Mirror
First of all, this is a dupe from Sunday. Nothing new to see here. Move along. These aren't the droids you're looking for.
Secondly (and more important): IE for the Mac was an entirely different product, with a different codebase and a different rendering engine. While IE for Mac did have an occasional vulnerability (typically patched pretty quickly), it was at the time a more standards-compliant browser than its distant Windows cousin.
Unlike IE for Windows, IE for Mac was simply an application. No low-level stuff, no rendering engine used by the system (like IE Win and, for that matter, Safari/WebKit for the Mac), no ActiveX compatibility, no nothing. Other than the lack of pop-up blocking (which wasn't a common feature in any browser yet), IE was a pretty decent product. Most Mac users used IE, and were pretty happy with it - it had versions for the old Mac OS, and a spiffy Carbonized version for OS X). When Apple announced Safari, though, the writing was on the wall for IE Mac - why keep building a browser that earns no revenue and doesn't even help draw users to other Microsoft products? Just to get a few more MSN pageviews by people too lazy to change their default homepage?
Nah.
The last time I resigned was in 1998 - I'd worked at the company for six years, and was in charge of all their tech. I offered nearly two months' notice (five weeks prior to an already-scheduled vacation, then another week-plus afterwards two wrap up). It was gratefully accepted, and I spent the time working harder than ever and training the person who was moved into my spot. I'm still on good terms with the company, and have come in several times to provide services since going into consulting last year.
The company I left them to go to laid me off after five-plus years, as part of a massive downsizing following a merger (my department of four will be down to a single person after the first of the year). Since I was IT management, policy of the company who had acquired us was that management would be terminated immediately and escorted out. Which, in addition to the irony, was amusing as it left them in tough straits for a while (I tried to make sure people knew how to do stuff, but there were still plenty of details where I was the only person who really knew them), and simply got me an extra two months of paid vacation (60 days was the layoff notice time for all other employees - including IT worker bees).
I wound up telling them all the things they needed to change afterwards to lock me out correctly. The only thing that actually annoyed me was that HR initially was going to terminate my benefits immediately - I pointed out, correctly, that I was really under a 60-day notice according to policy. It wasn't my fault that they didn't wish to use my services during those 60 days. After some quick consultation, they said "yep - you're right", and that was taken care of.
A year later I came back there as a consultant to help them with some DR-related stuff. Charged for every minute of my time, too.
I've handled terminations for some of my clients (and employers) over the years as well, of course - the simple way to do it for me is just implement whatever the policy is. Most of my clients are smaller companies - in those cases, the owner calls me up and tells me what to do, and how quickly they plan to do it. I don't enjoy that part of the job, but it's not about enjoyment - it's about what the customer needs done.
Yes, it would be better if this (and other flaws) never occurred. The main point here, though, is that Apple typically does a pretty good job of finding and addressing these flaws when they occur, and in a timely fashion. Microsoft does so in many cases, but in others they sit on the problem long enough that there's an opportunity for crackers to find and exploit it.
So for the most part Apple's methods work well. Of course zero bugs is a good target, but prompt identification and dissemination of fixes is reasonable. It's also pretty tough to craft an exploit that will simply zap Mac users and then get to them before Apple has an opportunity to get the patch out.
One thing Apple should do, though, is make Software Update a bigger part of the Guided Tour, and set it to default to check daily and download critical fixes automatically (right now, it just notifies as default behavior, and checks weekly). I've noticed users who simply ignore Software Update's dialog boxes because they don't understand what it's doing.
I bought my old Olympus digital camera from Abe's about 5 years back, and I was initially a little nervous about it, given the rep that most of the hole-in-the-wall photo stores have. However, other than a slightly higher than initially quoted shipping cost, everything worked out just fine. Even with the higher shipping, the price was still better than I could find locally by a large margin, and the camera was a US model with all the expected accessories in the box.
It's scary when you have a decent experience with a store and consider it a novelty...
That's kind of what part of my point was - I use and support all the platforms as part of my work, and I've used Linux literally for over a decade (I remember when Bob Young was showing up at computer flea markets with copied Yggdrasil CD's, to really date myself badly). I've used Linux personally, as a desktop and as a server, and I still do. I like the freedom to tinker and the ability to tweak it to my needs, regardless of distro.
.5% of marketshare is fine as far as I'm concerned - I'm not going to stop using a Linux desktop (though I'm posting this from my iMac G5) just because it's not a "mainstream desktop". But so many of these articles and posts are coming from a "Linux world domination" perspective that there's just no real thought towards the reality.
The problem is that I'm not the market that has to be happy in order for Linux to be a truly viable desktop OS. Joe User is the market, and Joe User has a lot less expertise than virtually anyone who ever has posted on Slashdot. People lose track of the fact that we're not representative of the marketplace. And even
For the right people, Linux is an awesome desktop OS. Problem is, we're the right people, and there's just not enough of us. When Linux becomes something that can just be installed and used, easily, with all the Little Things done right, then it'll get serious traction. Heck, as another poster on this thread commented, the reason Apple gets to work on eye candy is because they already figured out the Little Things. When a Linux distro gets that right, instant traction. And GNOME versus KDE is not the way to get there.
Posters here on Slashdot and all over always wonder why Linux hasn't made more of an impact in the desktop world. Well, this is the biggest reason (or representative of it, at least). In the Windows world or even the MacOS world, no regular users give a hoot what window manager they run. They don't care which packaging system they use, either. All they know is that they buy the OS and it works, and that programs written for the platform just work. And if they go out and buy an off-the-shelf program for their computer, it just installs. The underlying technology is irrelevant. Windows users don't really care about the difference between InstallShield and .MSI files - they just know that they double-click on SETUP.EXE or INSTALL.EXE and it installs the darned program. Mac users know they either double-click to run an installer or just drag a program into their Applications folder. And yes, I know there's ways to run X11 apps on both Mac and Windows, but basically the user doesn't have to know the difference between, for instance, Carbon apps and Cocoa apps. They don't choose between competing windowing systems. They just use the computer.
Linux systems are more or less founded on choice. Which is a great thing, but has no relationship with user-friendliness or consistency. Remember part of the original motivation behind GNOME - it was because a crew of folks was unhappy with the QT licensing. So they reinvented the wheel to deal with it. That's what's great about both Open Source and Free software, but it's also why a wide-open platform is not going to gain mainstream use anytime in the foreseeable future. Even if either KDE or GNOME shut down all their development efforts tomorrow, someone would pick up the dropped torch and keep it going. And then competing vendors would still have to pick one or the other.
The day Linux desktops start spreading is the day all the big projects decide they need to focus less on eye candy and more on making the system as simple, consistent, and reliable as possible. Kind of like OS X.
You can almost tell that ex-Apple folks designed it. Granted, they've addressed the most glaring design flaws (by increasing RAM and adding USB 2.0), but the deal-killer is still the battery life. Unless they can come up with better battery performance (I think it needs 5-6 hours) at a lower pricepoint, OQO isn't going too much farther, I suspect.
And yeah, a Linux/OpenOffice version of this would be pretty slick. It'd cut their licensing costs, too.
For a while after I got laid off, I kept COBRA coverage (the company paid for the first two months of it). I was considering a plan through my local chamber of commerce, but then my wife went back to work - she'd taken the first 2 1/3 years off after our son was born. Her job provides the insurance - though preschool is almost as expensive as insurance would be.
But the way we have things now, I work mainly Monday-Friday, she works Tuesday-Saturday (her job is one that has her on the road in the area servicing retailers). So we each have a solo day with our son, and then one day together as well. That keeps the preschool cost down a little, and gives us more quality time.
Were I single, I'd be able to afford individual insurance without too much effort, but family coverage is pricey. There's no real price difference for one child families versus multi-child families on most plans I've seen.
Basically, here's the roughly-a-paragraph version of my career, followed by what I do now:
Started mid-'80s with minor tech jobs and tech/sales jobs for crappy, now out-of-business retailers (Egghead, ComputerTown, etc.). Got hired by a customer to be their admin, spent 6 utterly frantic, insane years there. I worked at all hours of the day and night, dealt with issues constantly, but I was well-paid, respected, and treated well. I loved it. Went to another job as IT manager for an insurance company, paid a lot more money. Loved it and the people, until we were sucked in by a much bigger insurance company. Their strategic plan for us involved firing half the employees and turning it into a branch office. Lost my job there as one of the first overboard (I was management, after all) in mid-'03 after 5+ years - the first 3 solving problems and running operations, the last two having conference calls with my new boss in Minnesota.
After that thoroughly disheartening experience with The System, I decided to give being my own boss a shot. I hung out my shingle in the spring of '04, and managed to eke out a living for the first year. Now, I wouldn't say my success is assured and I'm not making the kind of bank I used to, but I'm really busy, making a good living, and I love my job. My customers are actually grateful for my work, and they trust me to help steer them in the right directions. The experience I had is a real asset for them. And even if this doesn't work out in the long term, I've learned a lot about myself, learned a lot about business, and gotten the chance to actually use all the tech skills I've piled up over the years instead of rotting from the neck up as a PHB.
The downside? Some weeks I can't find enough hours in the week to do everything, some weeks I hear crickets chirping when I sit in my office. And today was supposed to be a family day to go to a museum with my wife and son, but instead I had to finish a proposal in the morning, and then get called in to a customer about a half-hour from here to fix a server whose power supply had failed (installed before my time and soon to be replaced). But you know - it wasn't too bad. Because the proposal is for a nice bit of business, and that didn't take too long. And the other customer knew that I was giving up my personal time to help and they genuinely appreciated it. And appreciation is something that is often sorely lacking in the salaried, 9-5 world. Crises like that don't happen often, and it just happened to be today.
So basically I'm saying that if you want to be happy, consider working for yourself. It's a much better life (at least for me), and it's nice to at least have some measure of control again. The worst case is you'll learn something in failing. The best case is you get to really be in charge of your career.
How about they make a show about a bunch of Gen X people in a big house with a history on the coast in California. Each person can represent a "type", and they can even have blog entries combined with the media, talking about the subtext of each episode. It's a soap opera, updated for the web! To make it even cooler, they could have a dog that sort of "comes with the house" as the mascot, and have the dog provide blog entries that give us insights on the characters.
I even have a good name for it. They could call it "The Spot". Does that sound pretty cool and original?
Then, they could follow that monster hit up with a show about a college grad trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life. The gimmick here can be that she has a camera in every room of her house, that can follow her everywhere and watch her doing everything. And she can blog about her life, too. I think we could call that one "Jennicam" - I think nobody's used that name before!
After all, why re-do "The Daily Show" when there are so many new, original ideas to develop?
The cloners only made PowerPC-based Macs, not 680x0. Plus they had to buy their chipsets from Apple as well - they just tweaked them for higher performance than Apple was willing to do. Apple still sold the vast majority of MacOS systems (I think the total clone marketshare never exceeded 15% or so), but the thing that bit Apple about it was that that clone market (especially PowerComputing and Umax) was taking the highest-end part of the Mac market. And that was where the biggest profits were.
Jobs used the G3 transition and the accompanying move to "MacOS 8" (which was really just 7 with a few things bolted on, not the "Copland" 8 that was originally planned in the licensing deals) to freeze out clone licenses and get the market back. A nasty trick, but it worked.
I still remember Macworld Boston that year (1997), when everybody but Apple announced G3-based desktops shipping RSN (as soon as the licensing details were worked out with Apple). Of course, that never happened, so the tiny handful of those machines that ever made it into customer hands are probably collectors' items. Afterwards, Apple came out with their thoroughly underwhelming G3 desktop, and continued the death spiral...
Until the iMac was unveiled in 1998, and all of a sudden Apple started to get their mojo back. The rest is history.
When Apple announced the switch, the roadmap has the transition beginning with "value" Macs and portables in mid-2006, with the rest of the line transitioning over the next year.
Basically, they will replace G4-based systems first (eMac, mini, portables), since the G4 Macs are currently the most clock-speed restrained. G4 processors are pretty low on power consumption but top out under 2GHz.
The G5 desktop roadmap is good enough to keep going for a while, with small clock speed improvements and a probable move to dual-core G5 chips. Apple also makes their highest profits on the G5 desktops, so they've got an incentive to push that as gently as possible. Look for the switch there to be right to dual-core x86-64 processors. Right now, G5 processors are still competitive with their x86 counterparts, so that's the other reason to concentrate on the G4 models first.
Hopefully they'll change Xserve last. Those things are pretty darned slick as-is.
Vista is currently due at the end of 2006 (about when Apple plans to release Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard"), so Apple should be well into the transition by then. If Vista slips any further, Apple could even be most of the way through the whole process.
Who among us in their right mind didn't expect this possibility? The whole idea of these utterly generic Intel PowerMacs were for them to be cheap development preview systems. ADC members who wanted to test and develop ahead of time could either build Universal Binaries on PPC (and cross their fingers), or actually buy one of these and test while the OS is being ported and finalized.
The point here being, these are not production Intel Macs! Why would you expect to have everything Just Work (which, of course, is the whole reason many folks buy Macs in the first place) - heck, you can only get one of these systems if you're an ADC member! Remember, Apple said that OS X would not work on a generic Intel PC, only on Apple's gear. So now it's starting to come true? Wah!
As for the breakage between 10.4.1 Intel and 10.4.2 Intel - Get used to it - this may well happen a few more times before live product ships next year. I don't think any legit developers are worried about it. Only the pirates. Right now is the "build, test, and learn" phase, anyhow.
Oh no! The Socialist Deputy Mayor of a French city is making demands! What will we do now???
Seriously, HP sucks, we all know HP sucks, and this is yet another round of cuts in the death spiral. That said, if it were, say, Chirac ranting about HP that would be one thing. The folks at the top in a country can make things pretty difficult for you if they want - it's generally good to keep them appeased at least to some degree. But who on earth cares what some obscure Deputy Mayor thinks about anything other than the Mayor's lunch order? Why does every minor insignificant politician have to weigh in on this crap? Do they really think that their constituents believe they have influence over giant multinational corporations?
Even if this Destot fellow had some clout, HP's response would likely be "fine - how about we take all the jobs away, then... And move them to another country!"
I actually mean this - I hate pointless layoffs (and was the victim of one at a previous company), but I hate grandstanding local political hacks even more.
it's just really unlikely - and the consequences of Mac malware would probably be a lot less severe. The attack surface of a default Mac OS X installation is pretty darned small. There are no services open, no file sharing, no open ports, and no root user. The user's admin password is required to install anything that touches critical parts of the filesystem, and Apple is pretty good about patching potential vulnerabilities and making sure that the client Macs get them.
I've seen and heard of instances where OS X Server installs have gotten owned - it's not common but it does sometimes happen. Unlike Client, Server does give you services to use and admins are traditionally less eager to patch a running server - so updates may not be applied as quickly.
But as of right now, Mac OS X is fundamentally far more secure than Windows - period. And although someone _could_ write malware for OS X, as long as Windows dominates the universe they are exceedingly unlikely to try. And the dumb user is much better protected on the Mac than they are on Windows still - even with all the post-SP2 improvements to default policy and the much better 2003 Server.
Now that I tossed that statement out there, I'd like to clarify it some. I do feel that most certifications are useless. With few exceptions, they don't really reflect any real-world ability to perform the job, just that you've been able to demonstrate a base level of knowledge regarding a technology.
With that said, there are certifications that are usually indicative of a real skillset. Cisco's certifications are generally useful. Many certs in the security field are relevant. The old Novell CNE and Microsoft MCSE certs are next to useless. In my own work, the only certification I have ever bothered holding is the entry-level Apple Certified Help Desk cert, and that's just because a certification was required for entry into Apple's consultant program (which has been extremely valuable for my business). Even that certification didn't require any coursework - when I read the description, I signed up for the test and took it a couple of days later, sight unseen. And passed it in about 15 minutes.
That doesn't mean I'm an übergod of Mac OS X, it just means I knew the material well enough to pass the test easily. My experience is far more relevant.
When, in my prior work life, I was a corporate IT manager, I did not really use certs as a hiring criteria. I did look to see if they were present, but I was much more interested in reality. The ironic part was that the first IT person on my staff to take advantage of our company's (then) generous education benefits to get certified left almost immediately upon getting the MCSE cert to go work at a dot-com for ludicrous money.
Times were different then...
The biggest problem with certifications is that they usually provide an inflated view of a person's skills. But the bigger the organization, the less likely it is that you'll find people who have the time to look through the alphabet soup and can see the real skill overview. I don't know of any good solution, especially in the lower-to-mid level jobs.
When he was two, I took an old iMac G3 we had and set it up with a couple of preschooler games. He grasped the mouse idea very quickly, and now at 3 1/4, he's actually pretty proficient with his Mac. I've set him up with the Simple Finder in Mac OS X 10.3, and I made .dmg files from all the games that require the CD to be inserted - and then set them up to auto-mount. I covered the CD slot with a shield of duct tape, since he can't always resist the impulse to put stuff in there (and disassembling the iMac G3 is a pain). Besides that, I set up his Applications folder with only the apps we want him to have access to.
The whole thing is sitting on a table in his playroom - when he feels like using it he knows how to turn it on, and when he's done he knows how to put the iMac back to sleep.
Then again, he also knows how to operate our TiVo, too.
Seriously, though, depending on the age of a child there's a lot of different ways to go about this. I already had the Mac available - otherwise, I could have hooked up a PC or something. We don't give him any web access yet, of course - not much point to that when you can't even really read yet. But overall he's a surprisingly skilled user for his age and I figure he'll kick me out of my job by the time he can drive. That gives me 13 more years, though, so I'll make the best of it while I can!
One other related thing I've noted is that the quality of preschooler software is vastly improved from what it used to be. Requiring the CD to be present, though, is pretty stupid - as good at technology as some kids can be I have yet to see any who know how to take care of either a CD or a DVD. I rip and copy all his DVDs and just run off another dupe when he ruins the first dupe.
That's supposed to be the case, and if it is still so then this ruling is a Good Thing. Basically, how I understand it (and I may very well be wrong), is that an ILEC is no longer obligated to sublet their ISP services to other companies. For instance, in a number of cities Earthlink sells a repackaged version of the ILEC's services - that will no longer be required. However, they still have to offer access to the dry copper in order to let CLECs operate. Covad, for instance, is a CLEC. As are most DSL providers.
What I'm a lot less clear on is whether "line sharing" will still be OK - right now, for instance, my Speakeasy service is operating split on my Verizon line, via equipment co-located at my CO. Will that state of affairs continue, or will Speakeasy have to lease a wire from Verizon in it's entirety? The other variable will be what happens when Verizon gets FIOS deployed - will there still be a place for the CLECs at that point?
I suspect so, because it helps Verizon politically to say "look - we've got competition!".
We (meaning the US government/Russia/ESA), still want to use humans in LEO, and we want to keep the ISS in operation for the foreseeable future. The Space Shuttle has been a reasonably effective way to do that, but has shown it's age and the limitations of the "reusable space plane" approach. If it costs the same or more money to launch the Shuttle than it does to send "traditional" rockets into LEO, why not use traditional rockets instead?
Not only that, but this plan seems to recycle the best parts of the Shuttle design, increase human safety, and probably lower operational costs as well. Plus the cargo configuration can hoist more than the Shuttle - a lot more.
Politically, the US government (operator of the Shuttle), is not really willing to accept that flying the Shuttle is inherently dangerous, so NASA operates under very rigid safety guidelines. Then again, we've seen on TV what happens when those guidelines get bent too far (twice so far), and when you see astronauts die on TV it tends to dull the political appetite for risk.
So I think this plan that's coming out is a good one, given that we as a society do not seem to be willing to accept that going to space is risky, rockets can and will fail, and people can and will likely be killed on occasion in the process. They seem to be focusing on simply using the safest technologies from today's designs and re-engineering them to reduce the risk of failure and the likelihood of a catastrophic incident in the event of a failure. With a cost lower than today's system. A good engineering and political solution to what is basically a political problem.
Yeah, it's a nice mouse. Kind of slick, well-designed, and typical Apple kit. But it changes absolutely nothing about the Mac at all.
Apple still is including good old one-button mice with Macs by default. Mac OS X is still designed to only require one button in order to do everything - two buttons give you nice options but aren't necessary. So that's no different. Mac OS X has always supported multi-button mice and scroll wheels, as well. I use a Microsoft wheel mouse with my iMac G5 at the office, a Logitech wireless keyboard/mouse combo with my home iMac, and a Kensington Bluetooth mouse with my PowerBook. I prefer two buttons. My wife and son, on the other hand, both prefer and use Apple one-button mice with their Macs, and my wife also has a Compaq that came from her office (she works out of the house) - she hates the two-button mice.
Really, the only thing that's changed here is now Apple will gobble up some sales dollars that previously went to the aftermarket mouse makers. Assuming that a typical "decent" mouse sells for around $30, that's a nice little extra bit of revenue for Apple. And the name is kinda cool.
I know it won't make much difference for me, and probably not for my clients, either. A Mac is a computer that happens to run the Mac OS. And as long as the computer it runs on is priced competitively and performs equivalently to Windows systems in the same market segment, there's no real reason not to buy it (assuming, of course, that you want the Mac OS).
Sure, I really like Apple's industrial engineering, and the build quality of their kit compared to the typical Wintel box is way better, but I fully expect that Apple will keep on doing their own thing with the hardware - it's just that instead of buying PPC chips from IBM and Freescale (and designing their own chipsets), they'll be buying Pentiums and support chipsets from Intel. I expect that the rest of the board design and engineering will continue to be done by Apple, partly because they already have those skills in-house, and partly because this allows them to keep differentiating themselves from "regular" PC vendors.
But as long as Apple systems offer what I want, I'll keep using them. Regardless of whether they use Intel processors or whether they have DRM support in the chipset.
I use them for home, and I'd use them at my office if I could get anything other than IDSL from them at my location (I have an office in a huge old industrial complex where only Verizon and ISPs with facilities in the building can offer DSL). I've sent several of my friends and customers to Speakeasy with high confidence, and though I also wish they'd charge a little less, it's nice to have a DSL ISP that's still in business. That's pretty rare.
(I should know, before Speakeasy I was a Flashcom customer and then a DirecTV DSL user)
I did have a lot of trouble with them in early 2003, when I first signed up after DirecTV DSL chomped. The first time was really Verizon's fault - they screwed up the line release. The second time, though, was in May '93 when Speakeasy started switching users away from Covad's backbone - I was down for nearly two weeks and nearly walked away then.
To their credit, service since then has been utterly impeccable. The longest unscheduled outage I've had has been about 5-10 minutes or so, and never during the day. Speeds to most locations is very good as well. The important thing to me at this point is that Speakeasy tries to take care of customers properly, and even if they goof once in a while the fact that they make an effort is way better than most of the giants will do.
I think it depends on what variation on the Media Works/Media Net package you have. I just have Media Net Unlimited, which includes unlimited data but caps on text and MMS (neither of which I use). According to my plan and bill summaries, it's not an issue.
But it is pretty easy to confuse the various plans when you sign up. Media Works originally had an unlimited option that had no cap on regular data usage - that was how I used my old T637 as a wireless modem on occasion (before I switched to Verizon for that service - see my comments on the EV-DO story here for more details). I dropped Media Works Unlimited when I bought the Verizon card, but for my purposes the Media Net Unlimited does the same thing.
I've had mine for a couple of weeks, and I like it. A lot. I had a lot of trouble with it the first couple of days, until I weeded out all the incompatible cruft that had accumulated from all the software I had on my old Palm Tungsten T (which in turn had everything from prior Palms I've owned over the years). A few warm reboots and removed apps/patches later, it's very solid, only requiring one reset over the last week (an AvantGo sync locked it up). That, to me, is about average for a Palm nowadays, so the Treo is typical. Yes, it's bigger than my Sony Ericsson T637 was, but not ridiculously so. And it's smaller than any other phone I've seen with a QWERTY keyboard.
In its current version (I have the Cingular model, with the current non-updated firmware from them), there's some Bluetooth weirdness when using multiple devices with it. I mainly just use it wirelessly with my headset, so it's not a big deal right now. Battery life has been very good - a full day of use with no charging (an hour or two of phone time, and about an hour's worth of PDA use) will only take the charge down to about 80%. That's almost as good as my old phone. The speakerphone is pretty good, and even acceptable in the car. I do wish I still had Graffiti readily available, and I'm looking forward to getting more free space after the update finally comes out from Cingular, but overall I'm very pleased.
Note to Cingular users: if you buy the phone directly from Palm or a third-party without a service plan as an upgrade, you can save some money. With your old phone, add their $20/month Media Net unlimited plan, and then just move your SIM into the Treo when it arrives. You now have the exact same plan that would cost you $40 if you signed the Treo up directly.
The footprint of your typical wireless hotspot is a couple of hundred feet, at maximum. And there's not reason to expect that, outside of a few areas in some towns (like Newbury Street in Boston, or Essex Street in downtown Salem MA) that have sponsored WiFi meshes, you will have continuous service. So you're very limited as to where you have access.
With EV-DO, your hotspot is the entire metropolitan area. And you still get better than modem speeds even in places where the higher speeds are unavailable. Overall, if you can get a signal on a Verizon phone, you can get at least some form of data connectivity.
I've used one of the Audiovox cards with my PowerBook here in the Boston area since November, and it Just Works. Very good speeds and service everywhere I need to go.
If you never go too far away from the neighborhood coffee shop then by all means, stick to WiFi hotspots. But if you spend a lot of time on the road (I'm an IT freelancer and I don't have a lot of time to spend in my office), it's great. For what I do, using 3G lets me do customer work whenever the customer needs it. No waiting=happier customers=I get to keep making a living doing this.
Heck, I'm not the only category of person who benefits from this. Anybody who spends a lot of time on the road can potentially use it. Granted, if a WiFi signal is available I'll use that first, but much of the time it isn't. And when you get a call from a customer who needs you to initiate a database rebuild for them right now while you're driving up the coast towards an appointment in Gloucester (true incident from earlier this week), it's easy to pull over, whip out the PowerBook, and use the EV-DO connection to VPN into their network, Timbuktu into their server, and get the task done. I had to pull over for 5 minutes for that, and if all I had was WiFi I couldn't have done it.