I agree with everything you said. One other additional feature that is useful is that, with the web interface, it is much easier to configure services such as forwarding. On my old land-line, I had to dial a * number plus my cell phone to forward calls. And I was never sure if I had did it correctly, because it was so spotty. With Vonage, I just log in and change it. And I don't have to be home to change it. I can change it from work, if I forgot to reprogram the phone.
As for voice mail over email, I thought it was clever, but not great. Until I deleted a voice mail that my wife was actually saving. I just pulled up the voicemail from my gmail account and pulled it back up again. Basically, you can store a lot of voice mail in a gmail account and never worry about filling your voice mail box like you would in a land-line system.
It is unfortunate about the proliferation of remotes. A pro-level universal remote (Home Theater Master MX 700) is the best home theater purchase I've made. It is totally customizable by me and you can do all sorts of neat tricks such as punch through controls and macros. Also, it is learning remote. You don't have the problem the generic One For All remotes have in that not all functions are available.
As for neat tricks,, in a secondary system I have, it is set up so that, in one mode, the play button controls the VCR, the volume buttons control the TV, and the channel buttons control the cable box. On my main system, the volume is always controlling the receiver, but the channel buttons can control the VCR or the cable box, depending on what mode it is in.
Of course, it is probably beyond the desire of Joe Sixpack to program (though it is actually quite easy to program). But my stack of 5 remotes is now in a drawer for emergencies only.
The digital output audio is NEVER volume controllable. It gets input to your receiver, and you control the volume from the receiver. The receiver figures out the volume of each channel and where to send the signals. The blogger should have hooked the digital output to the receiver and used the receiver's remote to control volume.
It's not quite the SAME functionality. With multiple IE windows, cutting and pasting is a lot easier. But once you get used to it, you can't go back. Especially if there are multiple sites you like to have open at once (e.g., Slashdot and gmail and a news site)
I know that some people have large amounts of music, but isn't this overdoing it? Who would buy this thing compared to a cheaper 20GB one?
Here's a guess: people who have large amounts of music.
Different people have different needs. Personally, I can't see why anyone would buy a 4GB iPod. I finally installed iTunes on my computer and transferred a small fraction of my MP3s to it. I've already have 4.4 GB. On my main computer, I have well over 50GB, with hundreds of CDs that I haven't even encoded yet.
Your question is like asking, "who would buy a rack that holds 500 DVDs?" The answer is people who have or forsee having 500 DVDs. The fact that you have only 20 DVDs is immaterial.
It's not as helpful as you would think. It predicts where an earthquake might happen from 1/1/2000 to 12/31/2009. It just turns out that some of the predicted quakes have happened.
Unlike with hurricanes, Californians are still not able to prepare for an earthquake, just react to it when it happens.
FWIW, I felt the Parkfield earthquake, which was a magnitude 5.9 about 150 miles south of me. My office building just gently swayed. People I talked to on the ground felt nothing.
Re:The one feature that I would really like...
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Gmail Adds Features
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Also, the account remains valid if you access once every 9 months. That's good because hotmail deactivates you after 30 days.
Re:Interesting article
on
The Long Tail
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· Score: 1
To elaborate, it seems that Netflix labels new releases as "short wait" to encourage people to move up other movies in the queue. But if the "short wait" movie is #1, it will get to you. This was true for me back when I was watching 10 movies a month and is true for me now at about 4-5 movies per month. Doesn't seem to apply to Long Wait or Very Long Wait, though.
Re:Interesting article
on
The Long Tail
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· Score: 1
Re Netflix: I've never had trouble getting new releases. It's been covered and slashdot before. Your problem happens to some people, but not all people.
Just because you and your friends steal software doesn't mean that everyone does. I've had my computer for 4 years. Every single piece of software on it was either free or purchased legally. And there has to be a reason that Best Buy has rows and rows of boxed software. Someone is purchasing software.
I hate when I accidentally hit the submit button. Here is a depiction of the Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point. Same except no secondary hill at Cedar Point.
(OT, but their website doesn't seem Firefox friendly. The menus are all screwed up an unusable for me in Firefox, but work fine in IE).
I've had Vonage for 2 months. On and off (mostly off) echo problems. No dropouts. No delays. Haven't had a chance to call 911, but set it up to transmit my address to 911 operators. When power goes out, I'm screwed. Then again, my only phone is a cordless, so I'd be screwed anyway. You can always get a UPS, but I don't know how long you have power through those (will they work in multi-day outages, like in Florida?)
Just did some calculations. At 3.9 cents for additional minutes, if you use less than 884 minutes per month, you're better off getting the 500 minute plan and paying overage charges.
I have a Blackberry. It syncs with Outlook and gets emails pushed to it. I can check my email anytime. I automatically sync my calendar. I can write a note to myself and read it somewhere else (e.g., write a note in Outlook with the title of a book I want. When I get to the book store, I just pop out the Blackberry and can see what I wrote. I can send emails or just make notes to myself when I'm out and about. The keyboard is great because, with a stylus-based PDA, entering text became a pain.
Who cares if it is impossible to remove? I have IE on my work computer, but haven't used it for at least 6 months (since my bank started allowing me to use Firefox). It's still there, but I don't use it.
There may be ways. But they aren't used. Case in point, EA's MVP Baseball 2004. There is a "lefty bug" where it is much harder to hit home runs with left handed hitters than right handed hitters. The PC version was patched to correct this within a couple of weeks of release. They've never patched the XBox or PS2 versions.
The fact is, PC game publishers will release patches to fix games. Console game publishers won't.
250MB is not a lot of movie clips or music. It's about 3-4 albums encoded in VBR. So if you rip on one computer and want to transfer to another, you're limited.
Slashdot Mirror
As for voice mail over email, I thought it was clever, but not great. Until I deleted a voice mail that my wife was actually saving. I just pulled up the voicemail from my gmail account and pulled it back up again. Basically, you can store a lot of voice mail in a gmail account and never worry about filling your voice mail box like you would in a land-line system.
As for neat tricks,, in a secondary system I have, it is set up so that, in one mode, the play button controls the VCR, the volume buttons control the TV, and the channel buttons control the cable box. On my main system, the volume is always controlling the receiver, but the channel buttons can control the VCR or the cable box, depending on what mode it is in.
Of course, it is probably beyond the desire of Joe Sixpack to program (though it is actually quite easy to program). But my stack of 5 remotes is now in a drawer for emergencies only.
Only an idiot would use RF or S-video to connect an HD box to an HD TV.
The digital output audio is NEVER volume controllable. It gets input to your receiver, and you control the volume from the receiver. The receiver figures out the volume of each channel and where to send the signals. The blogger should have hooked the digital output to the receiver and used the receiver's remote to control volume.
It's not quite the SAME functionality. With multiple IE windows, cutting and pasting is a lot easier. But once you get used to it, you can't go back. Especially if there are multiple sites you like to have open at once (e.g., Slashdot and gmail and a news site)
Here's a guess: people who have large amounts of music.
Different people have different needs. Personally, I can't see why anyone would buy a 4GB iPod. I finally installed iTunes on my computer and transferred a small fraction of my MP3s to it. I've already have 4.4 GB. On my main computer, I have well over 50GB, with hundreds of CDs that I haven't even encoded yet.
Your question is like asking, "who would buy a rack that holds 500 DVDs?" The answer is people who have or forsee having 500 DVDs. The fact that you have only 20 DVDs is immaterial.
A Fry's Electronics in Silicon Valley has one of those Apple Is on display. I don't think it's for sale though.
Unlike with hurricanes, Californians are still not able to prepare for an earthquake, just react to it when it happens.
FWIW, I felt the Parkfield earthquake, which was a magnitude 5.9 about 150 miles south of me. My office building just gently swayed. People I talked to on the ground felt nothing.
Also, the account remains valid if you access once every 9 months. That's good because hotmail deactivates you after 30 days.
To elaborate, it seems that Netflix labels new releases as "short wait" to encourage people to move up other movies in the queue. But if the "short wait" movie is #1, it will get to you. This was true for me back when I was watching 10 movies a month and is true for me now at about 4-5 movies per month. Doesn't seem to apply to Long Wait or Very Long Wait, though.
Re Netflix: I've never had trouble getting new releases. It's been covered and slashdot before. Your problem happens to some people, but not all people.
Agreed. I use Firefox 1.0PR as my main browser. But I still have to use IE about once a week to access one site or another.
Just because you and your friends steal software doesn't mean that everyone does. I've had my computer for 4 years. Every single piece of software on it was either free or purchased legally. And there has to be a reason that Best Buy has rows and rows of boxed software. Someone is purchasing software.
(OT, but their website doesn't seem Firefox friendly. The menus are all screwed up an unusable for me in Firefox, but work fine in IE).
It's a clone of the ride at Cedar Point.
I've had Vonage for 2 months. On and off (mostly off) echo problems. No dropouts. No delays. Haven't had a chance to call 911, but set it up to transmit my address to 911 operators. When power goes out, I'm screwed. Then again, my only phone is a cordless, so I'd be screwed anyway. You can always get a UPS, but I don't know how long you have power through those (will they work in multi-day outages, like in Florida?)
Just did some calculations. At 3.9 cents for additional minutes, if you use less than 884 minutes per month, you're better off getting the 500 minute plan and paying overage charges.
They have invented them. They're called cell phones.
I should have added that additional calls are 3.9 cents per minute.
Vonage has a plan that gives you 500 minutes for $14.99 per month.
I have a Blackberry. It syncs with Outlook and gets emails pushed to it. I can check my email anytime. I automatically sync my calendar. I can write a note to myself and read it somewhere else (e.g., write a note in Outlook with the title of a book I want. When I get to the book store, I just pop out the Blackberry and can see what I wrote. I can send emails or just make notes to myself when I'm out and about. The keyboard is great because, with a stylus-based PDA, entering text became a pain.
Who cares if it is impossible to remove? I have IE on my work computer, but haven't used it for at least 6 months (since my bank started allowing me to use Firefox). It's still there, but I don't use it.
The story wasn't "misleading". It's flat out wrong. Mod parent up!
The fact is, PC game publishers will release patches to fix games. Console game publishers won't.
250MB is not a lot of movie clips or music. It's about 3-4 albums encoded in VBR. So if you rip on one computer and want to transfer to another, you're limited.