February 9, 2008 at 8:51 PM · Filed under Mobile Gadgets
I was very skeptical about buying a third-party phone case online for the simple fact that a lot of these cheap knockoffs aren’t exactly 100% as advertised. I had been using a funky digital camera holster for my PocketPC (that’s how mammoth it was). and the slimmer Treo wasn’t exactly a tight fit. After a couple spills onto soft grass, I decided to bite the bullet.
Google Checkout
The amount of items returned on a Google Product search is amazing. I knew the price range I was looking at was going to return a ton of stores with the exact same no-name items so I went digging. I ended up finding a store called EZ Chargers that sold phone supplies and supported, you guessed it, Google Checkout. It was the cheapest price of them all for the same leather case and it was on sale for $6.99 + S/H.
100% Brand Name
My case took a 4-day trip via USPS from West Texas to Southeast Georgia. To my amazement, not only did it come in a very nice packaging and include both a “normal” belt clip and a swivel clip (interchangeable!), but it was BRAND NAME! This was a brand new Cellet leather case. Cellet has had their name all over “mobile” for a while now, offering things from memory cards to batteries and so on.
And here it is in living color! If you look close you can see the dock of my Hackintosh on the monitor. Google saves the day again!
February 4, 2008 at 12:13 PM · Filed under Mobile Gadgets, Personal Rants
Aside from faking your own death or moving to Antarctica, there are few options for people wanting out of that lengthy cell phone contract unless you’re willing to pony up the cash for the $200 to $300 early termination fee written in lawyer-speak on the back of the phone contract you probably don’t remember signing. Let’s face it: We don’t carefully read through every fine print line of our phone contracts when we sign away years of our lives to the likes of Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, etc. Living on the edge is the American way!
The Easy Route
It used to be simple. Let’s say your job required you to pack up and move to New Mexico next week. When you arrive at the airport you realize you have no service! Oh, no. You still have about 15 months left on that Verizon Wireless contract and you can barely get a signal if you stand on your head.
Most mobile carriers have written into their Terms of Service that they don’t guarantee that service. This means if you move to an area which has no service on that “Nationwide” coverage, you’re still responsible for paying. Just because you can’t use your phone doesn’t mean you should stop paying for it, right? Yeah right!
Military Movers
Nowadays, with more and more military men and women moving overseas, most cell phone providers are willing to cancel out the contract early without paying any additonal fees as long as you don’t owe them money. Just fax in a copy of your orders or bring them to a local retailer. Some providers also offer a “vacation plan,” where they suspend your service until you come back to the United States and you’re only responsible for a small monthly fee of $15 or so to keep your service and phone number rather than the whole thing.
Contract Swapping
The easiest and most recommended method of getting out of your long cell phone contract is by giving it to someone who wants it. A friend or family member might have little or no credit and is stuck using a pre-paid phone because they don’t want to shell out $500 for a deposit. There’s your way out. Charge them just what the bill is, and call your mobile provider to have the “credit limit” on the account reduced so they can’t go all out and run up a $2,000 bill. They get a free slightly used phone, a new paid contract with more minutes, and you get the freedom to move elsewhere.
And there’s always faking your death, which as a dead person you might find it difficult to establish a new line of credit or enter into any legal agreements. Antarctica’s looking better all the time…
February 2, 2008 at 11:53 AM · Filed under Miscellaneous
I’ve realized over the years that on all these fancy and expensive mobile devices, the “alarm” tones are more of an annoying melody rather than just plain annoying. Easily incorporated into my dreams, I often find myself snoozing without hitting the “Snooze” button and sleeping straight through an army of repeat sessions with the common phone alarm.
I started to search around looking for an end-all loud and annoying tone to replace my handful of default alarms which sound more like an old Nokia ringtone than something that’ll wake the dead. I ended up creating my own 10-second tune. Feel free to download it as a large WAV or a small MP3.
February 2, 2008 at 1:29 AM · Filed under Apple / Mac
We waited 4 years for this shit? Well, it wouldn’t be the first time. If you remember back in 1994 when Office 4.2.1 was released, it took Microsoft another 3 1/2 years to roll out a decent version of Office ‘98 for the Macintosh users. Here we are in the first month of the year and after running Office 2008 Beta for God knows how long, I made the switch.
Don’t worry. Microsoft put all the goodies in there just for you. Everything you love on Windows, including a copy of what I consider to be the most useless application on any Microsoft Windows installation, Messenger. Office 2008 for Mac was originally slated for release in the second half of 2007, however it was delayed until the first part of 2008 citing the need to “fix lingering bugs” if that gives you any sort of hint.
Not many people know this, but Microsoft Office first appeared on Mac OS before it graced the noisy hard drive of its Windows supporter. The first version of Office was released in 1989 with Microsoft rolling out a version of their own for Windows a year later.
The installation process of Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac is very quick and painless. I want to say it moves along a lot faster on my Mac OS X Leopard (Intel 2.9GHz) than it does on similar hardware running Windows Vista. It takes a long time for each application to run for the first time. It may just be me but the Office applications seem to load considerably faster after you’ve run them once or twice. I was able to load Microsoft Word and PowerPoint simultaneously in under 10 seconds.
If you’re stuck on an older PowerPC Mac, you’ll want to stay away from Office 2008. Even though it’s a universal binary, Office 2004 runs a lot smoother on older Macs just like Office 2004 runs horribly slow with Rosetta on newer Intel-based Macs. Since Leopard has bumped up the requirements and left a lot of older Macs in the dust, I think 2008 will be further known as the year of the upgrade.
There are still a lot of little issues Microsoft needs to address (like letting us use our own native address book and calender) but for the most part, the average Office user who needs to write or edit a few quick pages for their Windows PC buddies will find themselves right at home overlooking random screwball errors and hiccups that has become Office 2008 Final. However if you’re a “power user” who’s always kung-fu’ing Office documents and have become a slave to the copier, I suggest moving back to iWork ‘08 until Microsoft releases some more “lingering” fixes.
February 1, 2008 at 12:32 AM · Filed under Personal Rants
I know, I know. 246 more days till the United States presidential elections and there are fewer faces running than when I first stepped out of my own little world and tried to imagine this beautiful country without another Republican in office. I’m not really trying to pick sides on this statement but come on, America. 8 years is long enough. It’s time for a change and whether some black man acting white or some woman who cries too much is our ticket to ending all this craziness, then let’s do it!
Yeah, I’m probably what you’d call a Democrat.
However, I’d love to see an independent party take the White House so all you Republicans and all you Democrats out there can work together for a change instead of working against each other. Pro war, anti terrorism, high gas prices, big oil. Those are the keywords of the United States these days and I think it’s time to change them.
Destroying an entire country to locate one man? That’s not what’s best for this country. “Big Oil” in the White House and gas prices reaching record highs? That’s not what’s best for this country. Efficiency in lawmaking? Nope, you guessed it. I’m not listing reasons why we should vote Democratic for the 2008 Presidential Elections. I’m just giving you reasons why you shouldn’t vote for another 4 to 8 years of what we’ve already been forced to live with.
On the flip side, it’s not looking good for the Democrats. As I write this, we are left with two minority runners and two firsts in the history of this country. In one corner we have Mr. Barack Obama, a 46-year-old black man and in the other Mrs. Hillary Clinton, a 60-year-old white woman. Considering this country was founded by white slave-owning men, who knows what we’re in store for but it sure is fun to watch on TV!
