I love this phone.

The display is gorgeous.

I love the live wallpapers.

It’s super fast. Slated to get Froyo 2.2 and full flash.

It’s the right size and weight for me. The EVO is too large. Plus I was already on Verizon and got a good deal.

The third time I picked up the phone, I typed on the onscreen keyboard perfectly. I nearly always use it in portrait and wouldn’t want a pull-out keyboard.

I love that it has seven home screens. You can put whatever you want on them, plus you can save different scenes for different times like profiles: work, play etc.

No idea what the complaints are about the Android interface, seems perfectly simple to use.

The camera is fine. (Keep in mind that I don’t see well enough to take serious pics with it anyway).

The battery life is fine as well. It averages about 7 1/2 hours with my normal use. I don’t foresee a problem with that. By that time I just plug it in.

I love having the Google calendar and contacts right there. If you add addresses to appointments and contacts you can just click the map icon and instantly see them on Google maps.

Voice commands and turn-by-turn directions are great.

I got this case. It’s black silicon that fits on the back and sides to protect if from spastic droppage. I don’t want to stick a plastic screen protector on it. No need.

There was one small problem with the hardware: the optical joystick stopped working after about a week and a half. I now have a new replacement phone with a working joystick.

One annoying oddity: why does the Droid sound not come on this phone? I loved it in the ad campaign, and had to download Mabilo Ringtones to get it. Why not include it?

Apps

First get the Barcode Scanner. So easy to download apps.

Then get AppBrain.

I can watch live streaming CNET podcasts using the Skyfire app!

Seesmic is my favorite Twitter app. I can switch between my two accounts, and it’s the easiest to use. Facebook Touch is the best FB app I tried. (My family is on there and doesn’t know what Twitter is).

When I got the replacement phone I used AppManager to backup the apps on the first phone then restore them on the new one.

I like the Battery Widget, WeatherBug and a lot of the silly ones like Instant Buttons, Light Saber, Tricorder, plus the Monty Python, Star Wars and Star Trek sound effects.

I’m still trying out other apps whenever I get a chance. The Incredible can do so much I haven’t had time to get to everything yet.

I love this phone.

PS – See the new Android Atlas Weekly podcast. Live tuesdays 2 PT.

Post from: Jeannie's Brain

Incredible Adventures part 2: I love it

I now have a Linksys WRT320N

WRT320N

Works great.

Post from: Jeannie's Brain

All about a router

There was a Black Friday sale and I got this at a great price. After reading more reviews….I got scared all over again and left it in the box. Then I got busy sorting out a new desktop and laptop. And it stayed in the box.

In March I started thinking I should really take it out of the box. I did, freaked that it would cause another problem with the desktop, and left it on the desk behind the monitor. One saturday I went back to reading reviews. It looked like the biggest complaint was about the backup software. I already back up to my laptop and Jungle Disk. I just wanted a big hard drive to drag majorly changed files over to once in a while. Enough prevaricating – I plugged it in.

Windows 7 instantly recognized it. I saw the crapware on it, reformatted to ntfs, created a few folders on it and dragged over the files I wanted. All of which took less than five minutes. The drive hummed and buzzed and shook the desk a bit, so when i was done I ejected it and left it there with the wire pulled out. Whenever I want to backup I simply plug it in and drag.

Looking for a larger grain of salt to take reviews with…

Post from: Jeannie's Brain

Go Ahead… and Back Up

I have never owned or even tried a smart phone before. I have also never used an onscreen keyboard or touchscreen. So I spent a couple of frustrating hours at the end of a long day attempting to make the authorization call to Verizon. The keyboard wasn’t going into landscape and I hit the wrong keys so many times I considered throwing it out the window. Verizon’s phone system repeatedly barked instructions at me, then terminated the call when I didn’t get the info in fast enough. I finally got an operator who authorized the phone. Enough frustration for one sitting. I turned it off.

The next day I had about an hour in the morning to try and figure out the keyboard. Apparently it only goes into landscape when you turn it clockwise (?). Finally I found the necessary keys to begin typing like a human rather than a keyboard cat.

That night I had a couple more hours to start learning how to move things around on the screen, and familiarize myself with the many options and apps.

To be continued…

Post from: Jeannie's Brain

Incredible Adventures part 1: Duh

HP Pavilion Elite e9280t PC

* • Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
* • Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-920 processor [2.66GHz, 1MB L2 + 8MB shared L3 cache]
* • 8GB DDR3-1066MHz SDRAM [4 DIMMs]
* • 2TB 7200 rpm SATA 3Gb/s – two 1TB hard drives
* • 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 220 [DVI, HDMI, VGA]
* • LightScribe 16X max. DVD+/-R/RW SuperMulti drive
* • Integrated 10/100/1000 (Gigabit) Ethernet, No wireless LAN
* • 15-in-1 memory card reader, 1 USB, 1394, audio
* • Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio

HP 2159m 21.5″ Diagonal Full HD Widescreen LCD Monitor
4-year HP Care Pack House Call Service for HP Pavilion Elite or MS200 Desktop PC

I turned it on. A minute later during Windows setup the screen went black. A balloon popped up that the video driver had stopped responding and recovered. This continued periodically – sudden black screen then the message about the video driver. I went to the Nvidia site and downloaded the most recent driver. This stopped the black screen. Then it proceeded to crash every time I went full screen on anything – black screen, had to hard restart. Plus it just randomly froze when I opened or dragged a window. Unresponsive. I discovered this thread which proved I was not alone.

I fought with HP on the phone. Only the lowest level of customer service ever answers the phone. I tried chat. Same thing. I tried email, got one stupid reply, complained about it, then got a couple of actual replies and convinced them there was a problem. They came and replaced the motherboard. No difference. They replaced the video card. No difference. It continued to crash randomly when I opened or dragged a window. I don’t even try to watch video full screen any more. At the end of last week I downloaded the fifth new driver in four months.

Waiting for the next freeze.

Post from: Jeannie's Brain

Don’t buy this desktop

Model Number: US-VGNFW590-LBOM
VGN-FW590 Configure-to-Order

Customization Details:

• Large Capacity Battery (VGP-BPL13)
• CD/DVD playback/burning
• 4GB (2GBx2) DDR2-SDRAM-800
• ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4650 graphics with 1GB dedicated video RAM
• Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor P8800 (2.66GHz)
• 16.4″ VAIO Display (1600×900)
• Genuine Microsoft® Windows® 7 Professional
• 500GB SATA Hard Disk Drive (5400rpm)
• Black
• FreshStart™
• No additional AntiVirus Software
• No additional Photo Editing Software
• No additional Office Software
• No additional Finance Software
• No additional Video Editing Software

It’s supposed to ship November 30 and take 5-7 days to arrive.

The Nebula color is nice, but it’s backordered and I thought I’d get tired of looking at it. I got the highest specs I could afford. My favorite feature in the Configure-to-Order may be the “FreshStart” choice: no crapware! Not even Norton, which I planned to spend the first couple of hours removing.

Can’t wait!

Post from: Jeannie's Brain

Lapping it up

At last someone noticed! All the teens I know positively swoon when they see my HP Mini. Why? Because they live on their various smartphones. To them a netbook has a big screen and keyboard, a fast processor and is very comfortable.

Yesterday I went through the netbook or smartphone debate again when I held the Motorola Droid in my hands and fell in love.

The Droid would be smaller to carry around.
My netbook fits in my pocketbook, but only if I carry a large one, and it makes the pocketbook heavy.

I would have almost universal service.
My ISP offers free wifi in most places here but there are blank areas, and free wifi is spotty or non-existent when I travel or go to another state. With the Droid I would have coverage anywhere Verizon is. And where I live Verizon coverage is universal.

The Droid is faster and easier to use than my netbook.
With the netbook I have to stop, sit or find a place to set it down, then wait for it to boot. And wait. Then wait for the browser to open. Then either maneuver on the small trackpad or carry a mouse with me. And the battery lasts less than two hours.

Droiiiiiiiid!!!

If I could afford the monthly bill I would get the Droid. (Health insurance went up, income is down). Annoying because if I traded in my current phone the Droid phone itself would only cost $99. Maybe in 2010.

Reading the netbook vs smartphone article again to remind myself that there are pluses to having a netbook…

Post from: Jeannie's Brain

Netbook or Smartphone. Again

This morning I could not upload an image to a post. I always uploaded them before, but suddenly, no.

Here is the error I got when I tried:

Unable to create directory /home/.blot/name/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02. Is its parent directory writable by the server?

After Googling and reading I found this solution. What worked was going to Settings, Miscellaneous Settings, Store uploads to this folder, and changing

/home/.blot/name/blog/wp-content/uploads

to simply

wp-content/uploads

Why?

I wonder what will fail to work next time I attempt a post.

Post from: Jeannie's Brain

Apps I Used to Like: WordPress

I had a problem with WordPress today, which turned out to be due to the server being moved and the ftp address changing. Which I did not find out until about four hours after tearing my hair out.

But some good came of it.

While troubleshooting, I discovered a solution to a really irritating issue I’d been having with some of the themes I uploaded. When I would go to ‘Manage Themes’ and click a few of the theme titles to preview how my blog would look using them, it would just show a blank, white page. I had to activate the theme in order to see how it looked.

Turns out, that if a theme title has a space or a dash in it, the preview does not work. When I go in and remove the space or dash from the theme title, the preview works.

One less annoyance in my world.

Post from: Jeannie's Brain

Apps I Like: Update

I tried half a dozen Twitter apps and hated them all. Twirl (ugly blue), Spaz and Alert Thingie were the last I tried. All were buggy and hard to read. Alert Thingie actually appeared with the bottom of the interface off the edge of my Mini’s screen and i couldn’t resize it! I uninstalled all of them.

Then someone recommended TweetDeck on Twitter. The white-on-black interface gives it enough contrast to be easily readable. (Why are so many apps blue?) The default is three columns: All Friends, Replies and Direct Messages. You can add, delete and rearrange columns. It’s easy to add a favorite column or organize your Twitter friends into groups. TweetDeck updates itself with a little woodpecker sound I find very enjoyable. (I love downy woodpeckers and all birds). The post field turns red when you go over 140 characters. It has several other features as well, notably URL shortening and Twit Scoop which shows you a tag cloud of what’s “buzzing”.

I’m thrilled to find this as my machines are getting old (need to replace this year). Not having a browser open all day is wonderful.

Prism

Prism is another app I use rather than have a browser open. I can place a link to any streaming video on my desktop and just click it when I want to watch. (In Firefox you can grab uStream links in Page Info). I can move it wherever i want on my screen. Best of all I can resize it. I simply cannot see a tiny video on a site or in a proprietary popout that can’t be made larger. I use this every day.

Jungle Disk

pb30 recommended Jungle Disk for online storage and it’s been great. It’s an Amazon S3 Service. The Jungle Disk software is a $20 one-time fee, then you pay for the amount of data transfer and what you store. No subscription charge. I put Jungle Disk on all of my machines. It appears as another drive and you can also access it via a web interface. I need to back up raw video, audio and image files for our business and Jungle Disk will take any file type. It was easy to install and easy to use. I’ve had no problems with it.

WordPress

This is so easy to use, I want to think of something to blog so I can come back here. I’d never blogged before and was nervous about setting it up. But now it couldn’t be simpler. Last week when I saw the 2.7.1 update saying I should backup first I got nervous. But I found WordPress Database Backup and backed up and updated without a hitch. I haunt the WordPress site for the latest themes and change several times a week. There are endless widgets and plugins to add. The Dashboard is so easy to use I put my drafts up here instead of working on them in Notepad then Word as I normally do. I love WordPress.J

Post from: Jeannie's Brain

Apps I Like