I bought an a500 and the Sprint Vision service last November and I?m patiently waiting for the year-long contract to end so I can cancel the service. This may be my last cell phone for a long time to come.
It?s been a comedy of errors since the start.
The phone came with a mail-in rebate for a free extended battery, which could be redeemed either by phone or via the web. Initially the web site would not accept my ESN number? insisting that it was too short. Having worked for in wireless I KNOW what an ESN number is. I tried several different browsers on both a Mac and a PC. No dice.
Calling the hotline several times over a period of a week yielded nothing but long hold times and disconnects. I waited a few weeks, tried the web site again. This time a pop up message let me know that the ESN# number that I was using was ?already redeemed?. I gave up at this point. I?ve since gotten accustomed to recharging my phone every night.
I purchased the phone before going on a trip and it worked fairly well. I was in a small city in upstate New York and was very pleased that everything worked so reliably? and then I returned home to Seattle.
Much to my disappointment the phone is almost useless in my apartment unless I use it while it?s on a flat surface with a headset near the window. If I move it or pick it up? dropped signal? and it?s too late to cancel the plan without paying through the nose. This is completely my fault? but sometimes it?s impossible to plan your life around testing a cell phone properly. The only building interiors that I get a reliable strong signal is the Sprint store and Starbucks!
Worse yet? the phone SHUTS OFF after a while if it doesn?t get a signal so even when I go back to a covered area my phone is off and I miss calls.
This is the fourth cell phone that I?ve owned and I?ve gotten accustomed to using them as a replacement for my watch and as an alarm clock. Not so with the a500. It only keeps time when it has a signal. This makes it useless as calendar because I can?t keep pulling it out of my pocket to see if it?s on.
I canceled the Vision service after two months and took my minute plan down to cheapest plan they offer. I was originally very excited about downloading games and ringers? until I actually tried it. Sprint was retooling their website when I signed up and I had to wait several weeks before I could download anything. Not that it was worth it the wait.
Most of the games are pay for play. While there are some games without time limits on them? they tend to be unpleasant to play. The checkers game just plain doesn?t work! Call me cheap? but I really resent having to pay a Tetris bill every few months! And would it kill Sprint to have a screenshot of the games available?
I've considered canceling the plan outright and going to another company but I?ve been laid off and that?s an expense that I can?t afford right now.
It's a pity that Apple didn't buy VPC. If they bundled a barebones version of VPC with OSX, some nervous would-be switchers might be more likely to buy a Mac. I doubt that Microsoft would kill the product, but it's very likely that the next version will "report home" more often with what you do with your Virtual PC. I hope I'm wrong about this.
I bought VPC when I bought my TiBook and found it extremely helpful. I installed Win 98 on it and Office 97 to work with my old ACCESS databases and it worked in a fairly speedy fashion. I also used it to handle various media files that QuickTime couldn't handle.
I LOVE being able to drag a file from my Windows desktop to the Mac OSX desktop and watch the icon change as it crosses "the border" between the two operating systems.
As I've replaced my Windows software with Mac equivalents (which are often improvements) I've used VPC less and less often... lately just to use Kazaa to download music. Before anyone suggests any OSX replacements for Kazaa... I've tried all sorts of Peer-2-Peer clients on the Mac (Lamewire anyone?) and can't find anything that even begins come close!
Around the time of the filming of "True Lies", I read an article about a project that involved photographing Arnold Schwarzenegger from every conceivable angle to create a database of images of a "younger" Arnold. This could be used in future film projects to prolong the lifespan of the aging action actor. If Arnold's arms ever grew flabby, they could "enhance" them with the aid of this database.
I never saw any follow-up on the story and don't know if it's been put to any practical use... in Terminator III perhaps?
The point is that in an increasingly image conscious, botox happy Hollywood, I could see this becoming the normal way to make films one day. The voice would be the same, but actor on the screen might be digital construct... a pasting together of old photograph.
The only drawback to this would be the confusion that it would cause during award ceremonies... the ancient actors collecting the Oscars would bear very little resemblance to the images on the movie screen!
I'm curious. Do most people limit themselves to just one web browser?
I use Camino, Explorer, and Safari on my Mac for different things.
Explorer is the slowest of the three and I have to endure pop-up adverts, but it allows me to save an entire web-page with formatting and pictures intact for off-line viewing AS A SINGLE FILE. I frequently save several dozen pages from various news-sites for offline reading in coffee-shops or while I'm flying. Safari can also save as a single file with formatting intact but without images. With Camino you get a file and a folder of images, etc. The single file format makes archiving a web-page MUCH easier.
I almost never use Explorer for general on-line web browsing due to the pop-up ads, lack of tabs, etc.
Camino is my usual on-line choice. Camino has tabs that are easy to get to, and I like the tray. Most important for me, Camino allows me to pick where I want to save files or images. Safari's tabs still have to be coaxed into appearing, and your file is downloaded to a default place. Both suppress popups. Safari may be a little faster but I hardly notice the difference.
I use Safari just because I'm curious about it, but it's all the way there yet. Yet. Of the three browsers, it renders on-screen text the best, and I like the minimalist brushed metal.
If I could find a web-browser that had tabs, killed pop-ups, looked sleek, rendered text beautifully, loaded pages quickly, could save an entire web-page intact as a single file, and allowed me to choose the location that I save a file in on the fly, I'd get rid of all the others.
Unfortunately when I move more than several hundred graphics files at a time (I'm an artist)I usually just get a beach ball and wait and wait and wait.
The amount of time seems to be random... sometimes it's a few seconds... another time I restarted the finder after about 10 minutes of colorful spinning.
Journalists that aren't already Mac zealots will, unfortunately, highlight every little problem that they encounter when they use a Mac... even if it's not Apple's fault... but if it's on a Mac... it's going to be perceived as a Mac problem.
I think it's a fair article but it seems to end rather ubruptly. I share some of his concerns.
After five years with a Windows laptop (then desktop) last December I splurged and bought a 1 Gigahertz 15 inch TiBook with a Superdrive and after using both my PC and Mac for a few weeks... now I just turn on the PC to play games while my Mac burns DVDs!
I'm extremely happy with my choice but something things are inexplicably slow on the Mac... moving a large group of files for example feel slower on a Mac than on a PC. I say FEELS because you have no indication of how long the process will take. Just a rainbow swirl that lingers on for a really long time.
Viewing preferences seem to switch back to the default almost at random... in some folders but not all.
I wish that the Free Space Left on Your Hard Drive problem would get fixed. It's very disconcerting to empty your trash can and see LESS free space on your hard drive and not MORE.
I'm sure that future versions & upgrades of OSX will smooth these problems out. I'm keeping current with upgrades and have already seen some of my pet peeves eliminated. These are not catastrophic problems... but for someone who is on the fence between OSX and XP, this makes the system appear less "finished" than it really is.
Opera on the PC has this feature. You can can set how often you'd like a page to refresh. Very handy for those of us who are... ahem... fans of cam portals.
I assume that Opera on the Mac is the same but I've never been able to get it to install let alone run it;^(
They might be too distracting. We have one person who (somehow) managed to get an TiBook and he needs to have it locked down and constantly has people hovering over his cubicle.
Not such problem with my Dell. No one could care less about it.
I'm still in mourning for the death of the typewriter industry which was killed by those heartless com-puter using bastards!
How unfair it is that people would prefer an easier and more convenient way of doing things! How dare they not continue to support the old business model!
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go write some more letters protesting the use of electric automobiles and praising the twenty year extension of the copyright law! Progress must be stopped!
I bought the 1 gig powerbook with the superdrive three weeks ago (SWEET!) and I was upset for about five minutes at losing my Top Mac status.
Can I at least be on the cutting edge for at least a month?
But you know... it's ok.
The people who are patting themselves on the back for being smart enough to wait a month to buy the "Aluminum Slab", will be gnashing their teeth in three months when Apple bumps up the speed to 1.5 gig and drops the price by $500... and comes out with the Self Healing Granite Powerbook with a 21" screen. Suggested retail price $5000 dollars. Forklift NOT included.
Enjoy your nice more portable computer with it's better battery life and let the Windows folks play the envy game...
Re:It all went downhill when Gene died
on
Critics Pan Nemesis
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The problems that "Enterprise" has are due more to bad pacing and underwritten characters than anything elsle.
Scott Bakula has an impressive squint and a firm Alpha Male jaw... but that's about it the extent of his character. The Vulcan hottie pouts and periodically undresses. Jolene Blalock is lovely... but her character comes off as angry and bored! They all come off as dull-witted and you wonder how on earth they've managed to get such an important position.
Almost every episode has these odd stretches of empty space when the actors look like they are stuggling to remember their (mediocre) lines and nothing much happens... only to rush the ending! It feels like someone is stretching a 1/2 hours worth of story to an hour... or 40 minutes when you subtract the commercials and the completely inappropriate opening theme song. What happend to sub-plots? I realize that the goal is to tone down the techie aspects of the show in order to appeal to a wider demographic... but why alienate your core audience in the process by offering a substandard series?
Enterprise, ufortunately is Star Trek for Dummies. Season two is a little better than season was... or maybe I've just lowered my expectations.
Slashdot Mirror
It?s been a comedy of errors since the start.
The phone came with a mail-in rebate for a free extended battery, which could be redeemed either by phone or via the web. Initially the web site would not accept my ESN number? insisting that it was too short. Having worked for in wireless I KNOW what an ESN number is. I tried several different browsers on both a Mac and a PC. No dice.
Calling the hotline several times over a period of a week yielded nothing but long hold times and disconnects. I waited a few weeks, tried the web site again. This time a pop up message let me know that the ESN# number that I was using was ?already redeemed?. I gave up at this point. I?ve since gotten accustomed to recharging my phone every night.
I purchased the phone before going on a trip and it worked fairly well. I was in a small city in upstate New York and was very pleased that everything worked so reliably? and then I returned home to Seattle.
Much to my disappointment the phone is almost useless in my apartment unless I use it while it?s on a flat surface with a headset near the window. If I move it or pick it up? dropped signal? and it?s too late to cancel the plan without paying through the nose. This is completely my fault? but sometimes it?s impossible to plan your life around testing a cell phone properly. The only building interiors that I get a reliable strong signal is the Sprint store and Starbucks!
Worse yet? the phone SHUTS OFF after a while if it doesn?t get a signal so even when I go back to a covered area my phone is off and I miss calls.
This is the fourth cell phone that I?ve owned and I?ve gotten accustomed to using them as a replacement for my watch and as an alarm clock. Not so with the a500. It only keeps time when it has a signal. This makes it useless as calendar because I can?t keep pulling it out of my pocket to see if it?s on.
I canceled the Vision service after two months and took my minute plan down to cheapest plan they offer. I was originally very excited about downloading games and ringers? until I actually tried it. Sprint was retooling their website when I signed up and I had to wait several weeks before I could download anything. Not that it was worth it the wait.
Most of the games are pay for play. While there are some games without time limits on them? they tend to be unpleasant to play. The checkers game just plain doesn?t work! Call me cheap? but I really resent having to pay a Tetris bill every few months! And would it kill Sprint to have a screenshot of the games available?
I've considered canceling the plan outright and going to another company but I?ve been laid off and that?s an expense that I can?t afford right now.
I bought VPC when I bought my TiBook and found it extremely helpful. I installed Win 98 on it and Office 97 to work with my old ACCESS databases and it worked in a fairly speedy fashion. I also used it to handle various media files that QuickTime couldn't handle.
I LOVE being able to drag a file from my Windows desktop to the Mac OSX desktop and watch the icon change as it crosses "the border" between the two operating systems.
As I've replaced my Windows software with Mac equivalents (which are often improvements) I've used VPC less and less often... lately just to use Kazaa to download music. Before anyone suggests any OSX replacements for Kazaa... I've tried all sorts of Peer-2-Peer clients on the Mac (Lamewire anyone?) and can't find anything that even begins come close!
Did anyone notice that the copyright date on the splash is 2032?
Sigh. It's going to be a LONG time before they get to version 1.0.
I never saw any follow-up on the story and don't know if it's been put to any practical use... in Terminator III perhaps?
The point is that in an increasingly image conscious, botox happy Hollywood, I could see this becoming the normal way to make films one day. The voice would be the same, but actor on the screen might be digital construct... a pasting together of old photograph.
The only drawback to this would be the confusion that it would cause during award ceremonies... the ancient actors collecting the Oscars would bear very little resemblance to the images on the movie screen!
I use Camino, Explorer, and Safari on my Mac for different things.
Explorer is the slowest of the three and I have to endure pop-up adverts, but it allows me to save an entire web-page with formatting and pictures intact for off-line viewing AS A SINGLE FILE. I frequently save several dozen pages from various news-sites for offline reading in coffee-shops or while I'm flying. Safari can also save as a single file with formatting intact but without images. With Camino you get a file and a folder of images, etc. The single file format makes archiving a web-page MUCH easier.
I almost never use Explorer for general on-line web browsing due to the pop-up ads, lack of tabs, etc.
Camino is my usual on-line choice. Camino has tabs that are easy to get to, and I like the tray. Most important for me, Camino allows me to pick where I want to save files or images. Safari's tabs still have to be coaxed into appearing, and your file is downloaded to a default place. Both suppress popups. Safari may be a little faster but I hardly notice the difference.
I use Safari just because I'm curious about it, but it's all the way there yet. Yet. Of the three browsers, it renders on-screen text the best, and I like the minimalist brushed metal.
If I could find a web-browser that had tabs, killed pop-ups, looked sleek, rendered text beautifully, loaded pages quickly, could save an entire web-page intact as a single file, and allowed me to choose the location that I save a file in on the fly, I'd get rid of all the others.
The amount of time seems to be random... sometimes it's a few seconds... another time I restarted the finder after about 10 minutes of colorful spinning.
Journalists that aren't already Mac zealots will, unfortunately, highlight every little problem that they encounter when they use a Mac... even if it's not Apple's fault... but if it's on a Mac... it's going to be perceived as a Mac problem.
I think it's a fair article but it seems to end rather ubruptly. I share some of his concerns.
After five years with a Windows laptop (then desktop) last December I splurged and bought a 1 Gigahertz 15 inch TiBook with a Superdrive and after using both my PC and Mac for a few weeks... now I just turn on the PC to play games while my Mac burns DVDs!
I'm extremely happy with my choice but something things are inexplicably slow on the Mac... moving a large group of files for example feel slower on a Mac than on a PC. I say FEELS because you have no indication of how long the process will take. Just a rainbow swirl that lingers on for a really long time.
Viewing preferences seem to switch back to the default almost at random... in some folders but not all.
I wish that the Free Space Left on Your Hard Drive problem would get fixed. It's very disconcerting to empty your trash can and see LESS free space on your hard drive and not MORE.
I'm sure that future versions & upgrades of OSX will smooth these problems out. I'm keeping current with upgrades and have already seen some of my pet peeves eliminated. These are not catastrophic problems... but for someone who is on the fence between OSX and XP, this makes the system appear less "finished" than it really is.
I assume that Opera on the Mac is the same but I've never been able to get it to install let alone run it ;^(
By "people" I mean George Lucas's lawyers.
Not such problem with my Dell. No one could care less about it.
How about a miniseries on Klingons... maybe a history of the Klingon Empire?
How unfair it is that people would prefer an easier and more convenient way of doing things! How dare they not continue to support the old business model!
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go write some more letters protesting the use of electric automobiles and praising the twenty year extension of the copyright law! Progress must be stopped!
Can I at least be on the cutting edge for at least a month?
But you know... it's ok.
The people who are patting themselves on the back for being smart enough to wait a month to buy the "Aluminum Slab", will be gnashing their teeth in three months when Apple bumps up the speed to 1.5 gig and drops the price by $500... and comes out with the Self Healing Granite Powerbook with a 21" screen. Suggested retail price $5000 dollars. Forklift NOT included.
Enjoy your nice more portable computer with it's better battery life and let the Windows folks play the envy game...
Scott Bakula has an impressive squint and a firm Alpha Male jaw... but that's about it the extent of his character. The Vulcan hottie pouts and periodically undresses. Jolene Blalock is lovely... but her character comes off as angry and bored! They all come off as dull-witted and you wonder how on earth they've managed to get such an important position.
Almost every episode has these odd stretches of empty space when the actors look like they are stuggling to remember their (mediocre) lines and nothing much happens... only to rush the ending! It feels like someone is stretching a 1/2 hours worth of story to an hour... or 40 minutes when you subtract the commercials and the completely inappropriate opening theme song. What happend to sub-plots? I realize that the goal is to tone down the techie aspects of the show in order to appeal to a wider demographic... but why alienate your core audience in the process by offering a substandard series?
Enterprise, ufortunately is Star Trek for Dummies. Season two is a little better than season was... or maybe I've just lowered my expectations.