Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Massively Late Update

Sorry guys, I've been really caught up in WoW, editing photos, and just going out to the mall and stuff.

Uhhh, where to start...

Well...you guys have probably heard me complain about my phone and provider. For those of you not in the know, I had this, a Sony Ericsson.




I really hated it. On paper, it looks like a good phone. Bluetooth, fairly comfortable dimensions, web access, camera. In actuality, it's terrible. I only got this phone because my RAZR was stolen from my pocket two summers ago...like a week after I got it. Admittedly, the RAZR isn't that great a phone, but it was better than this one. The camera takes horrible pictures. Every person I took a picture of looks very blurry. But that's probably not a big deal when the phone can only take about 10 pictures before it complains about lack of memory. The voice dialing feature never worked for me, instead, it added my voice command to each person I made a voice for. So everytime my dad calls me, I hear "Call Dad" before the ringing starts. Web access was always slow, so I never bothered to use it or wanted to pay for it. The battery never lasted very long. Two days on standby with minimal calling was pushing it's life. Big stretch from the 315 standby hours advertised. On top of that, the phone had a tendency to lock up and restart itself very often. Most times, for no reason at all. I distinctly remember one day where I slid the phone into my pocket, and it restarted the second it settled in the cloth. When I used my Bluetooth headset (also stolen) with the phone, the battery lasted all of 4 hours. Couple that with T-Mobile's spotty service, and it was an aggravating time with this phone.

I think I will try not to ever buy Sony's products ever again. I've owned a PDA, this phone, a CD burner, and several game consoles. I can honestly say that each item I've bought with a Sony brand on it has horribly disappointed me.

Anyway, what to do about my phone? Well, my family is kinda locked into T-Mobile, but there's hope! T-Mobile started a brand-new service called HotSpot@Home. If you buy a H@H plan, it allows you to make unlimited calls over WiFi. Any WiFi network you have access to, including T-Mobile's HotSpot locations. Why is this good? Think about Cornell campus. T-Mobile's coverage outside buildings is actually pretty good. Especially on Central and West. This is actually T-Mobile's strength; T-Mobile signals are known to be very good outside, mostly in urban areas. Now move inside with a T-Mobile phone. No cell signal. But, there's always WiFi. And since it's WiFi and you're on the H@H plan, all calls are free. Even during days. Most people have not heard of this plan. Why not? T-Mobile announced this service the day that the iPhone was announced.

Don't get me wrong, I like the iPhone. Especially for the lower price now. However, Apple has disabled a lot of the features that I thought were necessary or missing from the phone itself. For example, we know it has WiFi capability. Why is there no iChat program? Or Skype program? Even AT&T can have signal issues when WiFi is strong. Also, it is strangely odd that a smart phone lacks any sort of MicroSoft Office compatibility at all.

Anyway, I managed to convince my family to get me a new phone. Here it is:




(About the pictures: I just did a Google image search. Didn't know who to credit, so I hope the url is still embedded in the pictures)

Mine will be one of the newer ones with WiFi. Obviously to use the WiFi service. We're not signing me up for the email plan since it's kind of expensive for the limited use I'd get out of it. Also, mine will be black. I'M SO EXCITED HEHE.

Btw, if you have RSS readers, you might want to add this blog to that. They're quite handy. Especially if you have Gmail. You can download an extension called Better Gmail. Among other things, it integrates Google Reader (one of those RSS readers) into Gmail!

I had fun cooking for and eating at Nightmarket. Although, in my opinion, CTAS was not as on the ball as JUSA was. JUSA had chaos, but it was a lot more organized and smooth. CTAS was very confusing from what I saw. What does that ultimately mean? Well, it means that JUSA got pictures of everyone cooking. CTAS didn't allow me time for photo breaks, so they lost photos for club posters and such*. Oh well, just things to learn, I guess. It was still a good experience.

Why the asterisk? CTAS will most likely never receive any of my pictures. I ran into a lot of trouble with them this past summer and I would not like to repeat the events. Especially since some people not in the loop on what happened actually went and called the whole ordeal my fault. Just shows that if you look out for everyone, it just goes and backstabs you in the end. Specifically, I wanted to avoid anything like this happening to Optix (one of the parties involved), but my ideas and message were misinterpreted and misrepresented later and made me a bit of a villain.

I will try to update more often. Specifically about things that I experience/think about.

Expect a video game review or three, or advice on photography or cooking!

Stay Tuned.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I noticed something interesting on your picture of the BlackBerry. Does your specific one use a QWERTY keyboard or AZERTY keyboard? AZERTY, like the one in the picture, is used in France and Belgium.