Archive for March, 2006
First birthday surprise comes from my IT department
Today is my 37th birthday and I received quite a nice surprise from my work. Last week our IT staff offered to giveaway lots of our old laptops. These were primarily old Dell monsters that I thought would be great as a computer for my kids to use as a desktop. The day before the drawings were held they added a couple of Dell Latitude C400s that were actually pretty dang decent models (1.33 GHz, 1GB RAM, Windows 2000, Office XP, etc.) and I put my hat in the ring via email since I was off in Alaska. I returned to work this morning and found the docking station and C400 on my desk as I was one of the two lucky winners!
I now don’t have to build or buy my girls a computer and have a very cool small laptop that they can use around the house for school and fun. What a great way to start my birthday!
Use of devices in Alaska and i-mate SP5m tweaks
Posted by palmsolo in Smartphone on March 11, 2006
I am back from my trip to Ketchikan and now have a TON of work back in the office as a result.
I used the Treo 650 most of the time up in Alaska and then tried using the i-mate SP5m for a day since it is a smaller device and a bit easier to carry around. I decided to leave the test Nokia Nseries devices at home this time as I traveled light. I did have to switch back to the Treo 650 so I could use PdaNet with a USB cable to connect my Tablet PC and send a very important email off for work. I think there is a way to use the USB cable on my i-mate, but I haven’t set it up on my Tablet PC yet and didn’t have the time. Nokia PC Suite works very well for connecting the Nseries devices as modems and could just as well have used one of them.
OK, back to the i-mate SP5m. I really do like this device, but there are a couple things that really bother me. For example, it is painful to browse in Pocket Internet Explorer as scrolling takes forever and starts to hurt my thumb on the directional pad after a bit. I also hate going to the Club i-mate site every time I start Internet Explorer or press the IE hardware button. After searching around the MoDaCo.com site I found solutions to both these problems. I did some registry editing and now I can scroll up and down by pages simply with a press of the 2 or 8 button. I also now have Bloglines as the PIE home page since that is the first page I really like to go to when browsing on mobile devices.
I would use the SP5m more, but the camera quality is pretty poor and i-mate stupidly put in USB 1.1 with a miniSD card that is under the battery. Thus, transferring large multimedia files to the device takes much longer than it should. I like the way the Nseries devices have the expansion card access on the side of the device. This is the same with the Treo 650 that even has the SIM card accessible via an external slot. The display on the i-mate is awesome though and I do like the way it functions as a phone. It also gets the BEST reception out of all the devices I have tested in the last few months (N90, N70, Treo 650, i-mate SP5m, TORQ P120).
Off to Alaska again
Posted by palmsolo in Email post on March 8, 2006
I am becoming a regular Alaska commuter and am headed up to Ketchikan again for 3 days. This is my 4th trip up in 2006. I head to Savannah, Georgia next week and then should not travel again until May.
I packed light with my Treo 650 and i-mate SP5m as my only devices.
I LOVE my Treo 650!
As readers of my blog know I try out and jump around between a lot of devices. I recently was pondering a purchase of the new T-Mobile MDA (HTC Wizard) device, but after evaluating a faster TORQ P120 Phone Edition device and looking at what I had in my collection I decided to forget about that purchase. I am actually finding that I use smartphone devices more than a dedicated PDA type device and phone functionality and ease-of-use is becoming a higher priority for me.
With the new release of Softick Audio Gateway (that I just purchased a few minutes ago) I can now get A2DP Bluetooth stereo support on my Treo 650. The lack of ability to listen to podcasts and music on my Treo 650 with a Bluetooth headset was one reason I kept using the sample Nokia N70 I am reviewing. I do wish I could use a standard Bluetooth headset too and understand they may add this to the Audio Gateway in a future update. I also LOVE the bright high resolution of the Treo 650 and with this renewed devotion to my Treo 650 I just updated to the latest firmware (minus the RealPlayer and Tutorial files) and am reloading Pocket Tunes, tons of Laridian applications and Bible translations, and getting the 650 tuned to my preferences. I do think the Treo has a nice VGA camera, but would love to have one with the quality like the N70 or N90 2 megapixel models.
I am now also checking out the Treo sites for other software and utilities that may make my 650 even better. I have quite a bit loaded now with about 10MB of RAM available, thanks to PowerRun. I heard a lot about Butler and may try that one out soon too. Here is what I have loaded right now; PDAmill Classics, Eric’s Blackjack, Farkle, PDAmill Gems, PDAmill Solitaire and Solitaire II, Triples, WordPop, WordWatch, Agendus Pro, Agendus Mail SSL, PdaNet, SplashBlog, Softick Audio Gateway, Pocket Tunes, TCPMP, Daily Reader, Documents To Go 8 with PDF, Memorize, Mobipocket 5.2, MyBible, PrayerPartner, ProWord dictionary, LibertyControl, ScreenShot 5, KeyCaps600, KB LightsOff, Resco Explorer, Resco Backup, KMaps with Java Runtime, Mapopolis, PowerRUN, Tide Tool, Uninstall Manager, and VolumeCare. Do you have any other recommendations?
Nokia E61 approved by FCC
Posted by palmsolo in Email post on March 2, 2006
I love my Treo 650 and the stability of the N70 so I was excited to hear about the Nokia E61. This could very well be my next device. I am posting this from the N70 and keypad entry is painful for me.
