tech ronin

iSynch I'm making progress

Tonight I got the P800 into the iSynch panel. Turns out the first iSynch try aborted and the second one is just going on and on. Cancelling didn't particularly help. I bet I get a synch by tomorrow, though.

I'm also web browsing just fine and I have my email working. There was documentation on the T-mobile site that their 24/7 tech support walked me thru. These tech people are great! It's pretty easy to get through to them (waiting no more than 5 minutes) and they are all really polite and helpful and I've tried several by now. The level 3 techs work from 8 to midnight eastern. Not bad.

Still praying for a little attachable or wireless thumboard. I enjoy the handwriting when it works, but it's still a hassle compared to thumboarding. Sent a suggestion to Sony Ericsson about it.

Everything new that I add makes me more and more happy with this device. I showed my brother the chess program. He wants one. You can play chess via SMS and can find people who want to play and be found via wireless (if you turn on the option). Cool!

P800 Progress

Getting started with my beautiful P800 is a little more of a roller coaster ride than expected. The Sidekick was limited to the essentials and thus pretty simple. The P800 has much more capability and complexity. I soar with the possibilities and then, because my expectations are so high, get frustrated even more when I can't get something to work. Luckily, I'm persistent and enough of a geek to appreciate that this may be one of those no pain, no gain situations that's worth it. The P800 is clearly a new computer (actually, this is a powerful, open-ended platform to learn - I'm not used to this with a cell phone - but I'm also pretty thrilled to have this much to play with in a mobile device).

Favorites so far:

• Camera - it's a fun extra. I have a terrific little Minolta Dimage X already, but I don't always take it with me. Now I can record rough shots that will be perfect for quick emails to friends.
• Big screen for a phone-shaped device.
• Phone and speakerphone work very well. Stereo headphones included.
• Expandability with both software and memory.
• Jotter - cool note taker that lets me do little color drawings.

I have web browsing working now. But I need some time to play with it. Opera's web browser for the P800 is supposed to be really good but costs $39. I plan to get it once I've gotten my sea legs under me with this thing. It needs a name - P800 doesn't really quite do it for me. Any suggestions out there?

Bluetooth Blues

I want to be able to synch with my Powerbook and my iApps like Addressbook and iCal. Apple's website says I can do it. The Sony-Ericsson site says I can do it. On Saturday morning, I went out and bought a USB bluetooth dongle for my Powerbook. After some futzing around (futzing is an important technical term you know), I was able to get the Powerbook and the P800 paired. It's great, on the Powerbook Bluetooth preference pane, it now shows a heart next to the P800. How cute! A tiny little bluetooth icon appears in my menubar from which I can choose various commands like send files to other paired bluetooth devices that are in range. This worked and I was able to send some nice pics of the people I talk to most often so they appear on my P800 screen when I receive calls. Very fun!

But I'm Beaming

I now have lots of contacts in my P800 address book even though I haven't gotten iSynch to work yet. There's lots of different ways to go with a device that has Bluetooth, USB and infrared capabilities. I was able to beam a category at a time from my Treo 90 to my P800 using infrared. It is very fast. Only drawback is that the category doesn't transfer over, so I was doing some quick reassigning work over on the P800 after the category got transferred. Fume. But, hey, I'm thrilled to have all these phone and email addresses - about 250 or so in my cell phone.

I had the same thing going with my Sidekick after even more effort but the Sidekick wasn't a great phone so it didn't really thrill me that I had all the phone numbers in there. The P800 is an excellent phone so it's a priority to get all my numbers in there - especially with caller ID. A cool aspect is that the big-for-a-cellphone screen lets me see lots of information at once.

These are some of the things that aren't yet working:

• Browse the P800 from my Powerbook. This would let me copy files from the p800 back to my Powerbook. I would like to copy the 640x480 snapshots I've been taking so I can view them on a bigger screen.
• Send email. It's good at sending SMS messages, but so far email is not working. I can receive email. I think it will take one more call to T-mobile or perhaps a re-read of the user manual to solve the issue.
• Use the P800 as a cellular modem for my Powerbook. Haven't even tried to learn how to do this yet. That's down the list but if I can get it to work, it will come in handy for sure.
• Thumbboard. Ack! I really miss the keyboard on my Sidekick.
• No giraffe-like game to help me master the handwriting recognition. I'm getting better already, but I like having a fun game to play. A half hour of that would probably really help me right now.

Over and out, Scotty, I gotta get back to my real work or at least get some sleep.

P800 plus

Still not getting email or internet yet. I think everything is in place on T-mobile's end, but I need to set-up my email account and the T-mobile internet account info in my browser. I don't have documentation on it, so I'll need to call T-mobile to get the settings. These weren't issues with the Sidekick - it came set-up with its own email account and just worked once they set-up my email and internet accounts.

My regular ISP account gives me lots of email addresses, so I set a new one up just for my P800. Similar to what I was doing with my Sidekick, I forward all new emails that are from people in my address book to the email account I've designated for my P800.

I bought an unlocked P800 GSM phone. Sounded better than locked. But now I know what it means, thanks to Dan Gillmor in today's post:

Advice to Cory and anyone else who's planning to buy a mobile phone that runs on the GSM networks (the P800 does). Get a model that is unlocked -- that is, not tied to a particular carrier. This means you should not buy a model as part of a service plan; carriers subsidize the phones in those circumstances but then lock them down so you can't use them with other carriers' SIM cards.

Glad I got that one right (thanks for the comment, Randy Delucchi). In the same post, Gillmor points out a drawback of the Sidekick. You have to get T-mobile's permission to add any software to it, since it is such a server-integrated device. Another reason to feel good about getting the P800 instead... That helps assuage my bouts with buyer's remorse!

Thanks, also, to Christian Hauck who commented on my last post and pointed me to a 5-star, in depth, hands-on review of the P800 (lots of pics) by Nicholas Triano at Geek.com.

Picked P800

At the 11th hour, I chose to return my Sidekick and buy a Sony Ericsson P800. No thumbboard - my biggest criterion. Now I've gotta figure out how to handwrite with this thing - it's not the traditional Palm method. I get about 2/3rds of the letters right. Still can't find the period!

Beauty won out over the beast. This is gorgeous! It's got a 208 x 320 pixel screen. It's nicer in the hand - more phone like. Here's what I got extra: touch screen. Symbian 7 OS, which is very popular in Europe. Bluetooth. Voice recording and a speakerphone. MP3 player. A 640x480 camera - I wanted to be able to play with that. Memory expansion slot. 200 mhz processor. Synching cradle with desktop synching to OS X's iApps.

Because they don't officially sell the P800 in the US, the support from my cell phone dealer (Fone Art in Berkeley) or T-mobile is minimal. Since T-mobile sells the Sidekick themselves, they know about it. Not so with this. T-mobile customer support doesn't even have the P800 in their tech support database.

Like last time, the phone worked immediately, but I don't have Net access yet. I have to work for a living and learn this little guy at the same time (tough life, huh?). Bluetooth synching and control of iTunes etc. is a priority. Tips and links to good sites for more info will be greatly appreciated.

I love this phone! My Sidekick didn't quite cut it as a regular cellphone but this one is great for phone - with its automatic speakerphone that is loud and clear, you can use your phone as a PDA while talking to look up information, see your notes, look up another phone number, etc. Paid $495 with 12-mo activation. More soon!

In depth Epinions review. Flashy and extensive Sony Ericsson P800 site. My-Symbian.com's P800 page. Mobiledia review. c|net gives it an 8.3.

iSight Video-cam

I don't have one yet. But these things look so cool! I like this shot from the Apple iSight page. I am very interested in trying one of these out. It has such great specs and iChat AV takes all the hassle out of video conferencing. I tried doing that years ago with little satisfaction. Looks like the time is right for this thing. I have several Mac-based friends at a distance who I would love to connect with on this. Let me know about your experiences if you beat me to it.

G5 PowerMacs, Panther and iChat AV!

Steve Jobs' keynote today was no little matter. The long-awaited PowerMac G5s, a greatly improved Panther Finder and iChat AV were unveiled. These are all going to be huge!

Sometime in August, if things go as planned, you'll be able to buy a blazingly fast, dual 2 ghz, G5-based PowerMac in a really cool aluminum enclosure for $3000! A single processor, 1.6 ghz version will sell for only $2 grand (Apple is taking pre-orders now). The G5 processor decisively evens the playing field between Macs and PCs when it comes to speed.

iChat, renamed iChat AV, is available now as a Public Beta. It has video conferencing that's as easy as iChat has always been! Double-click your buddy and go. This is amazing. You can make free long distance or local phone calls with iChat. Or, if you both have video-cams and broadband access, you can video conference.

Apple is selling a hot new monitor-top video-cam for $150 starting this week! Steve and some of the staff at Apple have been discretely trying out iChat AV for the last month and he says it absolutely transforms communication.

OS X Panther seems to have slipped a bit - it's now due by year-end. However, Steve showed us six major new features in Panther that rocked the house:

1. The Places sidebar, is on the left in every Finder window. It is a user-defined list of your favorite places. You can put whatever folders, documents or servers you want on there and have single-click access to all your favorite places. This should cure Apple menu withdrawal in a hurry.
2. Fast Find. When you type into the little find window in the tool bar, files start popping up immediately.
3. A context-sensitive action button in the Finder window tool bar that gives you a handy contextual menu of everything you might be wanting to do.
4. A snazzy way to switch users without closing all your apps and documents first: "the current desktop becomes a texture placed on a 3D cube that rotates out of view while the incoming account desktop rotates into view on another side of the cube."
5. A capability called Exposé that gets rid of window clutter in an instant. Yes. There's a keyboard equivalent. And it goes well beyond hide other in its function.
6. Mail is much improved. It's a lot faster (finally!) and shows threads that you access by clicking on a little triangle icon.

Steve's keynote @ Apple Store

I'm sitting in front of the Apple Store in Palo Alto right now - 8:35 am. Last night I saw one of my blog/Ryze buddies, Allan Karl, was going to the LA Apple store to see a satellite broadcast of Steve Jobs' Keynote at the Worldwide Apple Developers Conference at Moscone Center in SF. I suddenly realized that I needed to come to Palo Alto to see Steve live. So here I am with about 6 teenage geeks - I guess everyone else works for a living because we are the total line so far. We've got 3 Titanium powerbooks and 2 iBooks amongst the 7 of us - cruising on wi-fi compliments of Apple.

OK. 9:56 am. We just got into the store. Surprise, there's only room for about 20 people on the benches and there's only room for three more because Apple staff and press are already seated. About twenty people fit inside the U of the benches on the floor. The rest are standing room only. The screen is pretty high, and the volume is turned way up so most of the store can see the screen at least partially and hear everything. There's lots of talk and excitement. Wooh! They are playing some kind of cool house music that just makes things even more exciting.

Cellular or wi-fi handheld?

When you sign up for cellular data access, you can expect to get access most of the time. Your reception may be spotty some places and none of us like that. But, you get an almost always on data connection. Wi-fi (802.11b etc.) has grown by leaps and bounds of late and is now in many of our homes, most offices, airports, Starbucks, a lot of other coffee shops and even Borders.

Here's the rub. Wi-fi is not ubiquitous yet. There's lots of talk about community wi-fi and mesh networks, but it's still just talk for most of us. I don't want to spend $30/month just to get access to wi-fi at Starbucks, Borders and the airport.

Most wi-fi connections can be hacked to get a free connection. If you have access to all wi-fi hot spots public and private, you are in business. But most of us (a) don't know how to do it, (b) don't have time to implement it and (c) think it's unethical. I'm hoping that mesh networks will make wi-fi free or close to it, but we aren't there yet.

Bottom line. If you want 24/7 Net access right now, you need cellular. Too bad that's gonna cost you. The cell providers slow down the process. Companies like Palm have to bend over backwards to please them. Handheld technology with cellular is 6 or more months behind other handheld tech because manufacturers have to tailor their offerings for each cell provider. That means they freeze the base technology months ahead of the release date.

The Tungsten W released this spring is a perfect example. It has lousy specs. It runs at 33 mhz, 16 mb of RAM and runs Palm OS 4.1. Compare that to the new wi-fi Tungsten C that runs at 400 mhz, has 64 mb RAM, has a better screen and OS 5.2.

Since I want something now, I'll take moderately priced 24/7 cell access (the color Sidekick) over occasional, faster wi-fi (Tungsten C). Within the year, the best mobile devices may have all three options: cellular, wi-fi and blue tooth. When the Treo 600 comes out in the Fall, it will be capable of using a blue tooth or wi-fi SD card (too bad it has 160x160 screen resolution).

Next year, the hot ticket may be combo cellular/wi-fi service plans. You'll use wi-fi, when available, for its speed and cellular to fill in the gaps and make phone calls. You'll use bluetooth to communicate with cheaper devices that don't justify the extra expense of wi-fi circuitry. Wi-Fi and 3G Together? posted on 80211-planet.com on Friday and the June 2nd post Wi-Fi: Will it fly or will it die? on Brighthand are also good.

24/7 wireless wins

What can I say? We're all going to have an almost always on wireless handheld in a year or two. Portable email alone makes it worth your while.

Face it. Email is already more important than phone for many of us. Voice mail hell should refer to more than just byzantine voice mail systems. Your own voice mail sucks because it is sequential. You have to listen to the whole message to find out if anything important is said in the last 2 seconds. So, there you are, listening to long voice mails and hating every minute of it.

Enter email. We all get it (along with way too much spam) and sometimes it can be a pain to keep up with it. But, it's so much easier to quickly glance through your new email and see who it's from and the subject header. You can scan most emails very fast. Now you are cool. You can answer the ones you want in the order of your priority on your own schedule. No phone tag.

What's keeping this superior form of communication from really dominating is that it can be hard to get your email or find out that you have an important email when you are away from your computer. Enter 24/7 email access via a cell phone/pda like the Sidekick, Tungsten W, Treo 270 or 300, Blackberry or, my secret amor, the Sony Ericsson P800 (which is ruled out for me because of no QWERTY keyboard).

Voila! You get a single vibrate or chime or ring when you get an email. I set my main email account to forward my email to my Sidekick if the sender is in my address book or the name of my product is mentioned in the subject line. Very effective! I know that when I get an email on my SK, it's worth receiving. And, since it updates constantly - I don't have to check mail, I find out about emails as soon as they come in. Then if I want to respond immediately, I do. I email or call if need be. I tell you, it's the only way to fly!

Sidekick Shortcomings

As the June 25 return deadline approaches the doubts appear. If I keep it, I know this is a transitional device because even though it is the best phone/pda I've found, it's missing some key features.Here's what's not to like about the color T-Mobile Sidekick:

• No third party software (there's no SDK yet)
• Not compatible - no Palm, no PocketPC
• Not 320x320 like the Tungsten C
• Service drops out fairly often
• Awkward as a phone without a headset
• Slow GPRS access compared to fast wi-fi
• No expansion slot for SD, bluetooth or wi-fi
• No touchscreen - can't use my fingernail to select text
• Doesn't yet synch to desktop software, only web
• Notes doesn't have categories
• No built-in camera
• No speakerphone
• No voice recording or MP3
• Kind of bulky