David’s Musings

I’m still loving my Blackberry Bold, but I’m onto my second. A week ago, I noticed I couldn’t receive emails. I could send, but not receive. Via WiFi it was fine, but via the mobile network, 3G or EDGE, no.

Customer service down the drain?

I called AT&T several times during the same day and got the usual stock responses: restart, take out your battery and wait 30 seconds etc. I don’t presume to be a Blackberry expert, but I have had several Blackberries over six years. It seemed I knew more than the operators and it became very exhausting.

AT&T were stumped. In the end they said it was my IT department’s problem as I was on BES. It was only after three hours with our Desktop Team and a conference call directly with RIM a hardware failure was diagnosed.

AT&T advised me to return the unit to a store for a straight swap and put a note on my account that I was going to do that the same day. OK I thought, I’ll do it on the way home.

I went to my local store and they refused to swap it as it was over four weeks old. OK, you have policies AT&T, but my Blackberry is my lifeline when it comes to work, I bought a brand new Bold from you five weeks ago, you sell the Bold as true business tool, and, by the way, this phone isn’t that inexpensive. The two assistants stood there, leaning on their workstation with their arms folded in a ‘not my problem’ stance. They even refused to look at my account on their PC when I told them a note had been placed on the system.

The store told me to go through their warranty exchange programme. Therefore, I was without my Blackberry over the Christmas season - which is just when I needed it if there was a major incident at work while I was out on vacation.

The AT&T store should have said, sorry Mr Burden, we cannot believe your $500+ unit we bill as the ultimate business tool has failed in five weeks, here’s a new one. No questions asked.

Am I wrong?

One week in, and I absolutely love my Blackberry Bold from AT&T. With many delays, it was a long time coming, but worth the wait.

This is my eighth Blackberry which seems a bit greedy, and it’s only been six months since I bought the Curve, which is a little strange I admit, but, hey, I’m a glutton for new gadgets and technology.

The feel and usability of the Bold is fantastic. There have been many reviews already done, so I don’t want to replicate. You notice the speed and stability more than anything. There is more internal memory to let your applications run smoothly and load quickly. The screen is fantastic and you can watch video in glorious detail. I slapped in a 8GB card and have some films and television to watch when I’m on the move. The keypad is quiet, solid and responsive.

The improved Blackberry Browser tied with the crystal sharp screen gives a great web-experience. With 3G you can watch streaming clips from YouTube. If you take photos and video, it is now very speedy to take these off onto your PC or iMac via USB compared with previous Blackberry models.

AT&T and Blackberry put some good thought into the UI and the look and feel. The themes are crisp and fresh. I seem to have Wifi and Bluetooth switched on at all times. Even by doing that, the battery lasts a good 1.5 days with pretty heavy use. I have to say even though the device is 3G, I don’t notice it making a huge difference with normal Blackberry use. Emails come through the same as the previous models. When you browse, you don’t notice a huge difference either. However, if you download attachments, pictures or applications - that’s when you do notice it making a huge difference.

The camera is the same as my old Curve, 2MP, so no real change there. But again, because of the processing speed of the Bold, the videos I record are crisp and not jumpy

I’ve found two bugs in the software: On one occasion, the red light stayed on constantly and I had to reboot - and the other was that the colours of the writing of the keys in the calculator app sometimes act strangly when pressed. Apart from that, everything else is fine.

The only thing I don’t like too much is the specially commisioned music themes for the Bold by Stewart Copeland. They sound like a two-legged cat walking over my daughters Schoenhut (you might have to Google that!)

Blackberry Bold specifications:

• Size - Length: 114mm, Width: 66mm, Thickness: 14mm
• Weight (with battery) - 133g (same as the 88xx series. I can attest to it!)
• Memory - 1GB on-board (storage) and 128 MB Flash (applications)
• Battery - 1500mAhr lithium cell
• Est. Battery Life - Standby: 13 days, Talk Time: 5 hours
• Network Support - UMTS: 2100 / 1900 / 850MHz, GSM: 1900 / 1800 / 900 / 850 MHz, GPRS, EDGE and HDSPA networks
• Wi-Fi - 803.11a/b/g enabled
• Display - HVGA, 480 x 320 pixels, Transmissive TFT LCD, supports over 65k colors
• Media Player, Video Support - DivX 4, Div X 5 & 6 are partially supported, XviD is partially supported, H.263, H.264 and WMV3
• Media Player, Audio Support - .3gp, MP3, WMA9 (.wma/.asf), WMA9 Pro/WMA 10, MIDI, AMR-NB, Professional AAC/AAC+/eAAC+
• Media Player, Audio - BlackBerry Media Sync allows you to transfer your desktop iTunes music to your BlackBerry
• Camera - 2.0MP, 5 x digital zoom (with flash)
• GPS - internal GPS with extended ephemeris
• Bluetooth - Bluetooth v2.0, all the normal stuff and Bluetooth Stereo Audio via A2DP and AVCRP
• USB Port - Enables charging and high-speed data synchronizations via USB
• Browser - HTML browsing, view movies/clips from websites built for mobile streaming, RSS feed support
• Cost with USA AT&T from $299.99 for 2 year contract or upgrade with rebate - the no commitment price $549.99 (as at 20 Nov 08)

Yesterday, I got my first iMac. I’ve been waiting to make the switch for a long time now (around 15 years I guess), but I finally have. I’m absolutely thrilled with the purchase. It’s going to take a while to make the conversion as I’m so used to a PC, but already I’m finding the iMac relatively easy to use.

I made an appointment with a personal shopper in the Stanford Apple store. Fantastic service, the guy really knew his stuff. I even got really into the deep technical questions and threw some curve balls around PC and Mac wireless networking, filesharing and DNLA, but nothing seemed to phase him.

I walked out with a shiny new 24″ iMac with the following:

• 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
• 4GB memory
• 1TB hard drive
• 8x double-layer SuperDrive
• NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS with 512MB memory
• Microsoft Mac:Office 2008

Took it home, the setup was straight forward and even though the Apple Store offered to do it for me, I now begin the long road of transferring all my files from PC to Mac. I thought I might as well throw myself in at the deep end. Watch this space.

This is the new iPhone, available July 11, enough said:

Other key takeaways:

• 35% of the Fortune 500 have participated in the iPhone 2.0 beta program. The top 5 banks, top 5 security firms, 6 or 7 top airlines, 8 of 10 top pharmaceuticals and 8 of 10 of the top entertainment companies
• Great mobile applications and games to come
• Apple will release a unified push notification service. It preserves battery life and maintains iPhone performance. It all works over the air over wifi and cellular - and it’ll be available in September
• There will be document support for all Microsoft Office files, addition of many new languages, bulk delete and move of email, ability to save files and pictures, new scientific calculator and parental controls
• Enterprise application distribution
• MobileMe, platform agnostic application suite; all applications looking like Apple native applications - looks nice. MobileMe is branded as Exchange for the rest of us - with proper ‘push’ functionality. Users of .Mac will be automatically upgraded, it will be available for $99 a year with 20GB of storage. Free trial for 60 days with iPhone 2.0
• iPhone sold 6m before running out, customer satisfaction 90%
• Need to make iPhone more affordable and allow sales in more countries
• iPhone 3G announced, black back, thinner at the edges, full plastic back, solid metal buttons, camera, flush headphone jack, improved audio
• With 3G, iPhone 36% faster than the Nokia N95 and Treo 750
• GPS included
• Full Exchange support, secure VPN
• Want to expand access to iPhones across the world, larger market, 70 countries in the next few months. iPhone will be sold for $199 for an 8GB - heavily subsidised. $299 for a white 16GB model

Yesterday I bought a new Blackberry, the Blackberry Curve 8310. My Blackberry Pearl 8100 had served me extremely well - it was a very faithful device. However, after around a year and a half, the silver paint was wearing off, the camera started to blur, the connection would start to drop and reconnect and the back would occasionally fall to the ground.

I had to find a suitable replacement. I wanted to definitely get a Blackberry, and I definitely wanted a camera. I didn’t really think I would ever use wifi on a device - and if I had to choose between GPS and wifi, I’d go with GPS. I’ve never had a problem with the speeds over GPRS or EDGE when using a Blackberry.

I also thought about the new Blackberry 9000 that will be out later in the year. However, from what I’ve heard and read, the specifications sound great, but the battery life seems poor. The cost of the unit will be fairly substantial too. It’s supposed to have a high quality finish and the photos leaked seem to suggest that, however from people I know who have actually touched them, it seems to have a plastic feel to it. I cannot be sure that’s true.

The 8310 is my seventh Blackberry, but not my seventh phone. Can anyone out there beat that?! You can have a look at all the Blackberry devices I’ve owned at an old post here. A sample photo taken in bad light with the flash can be seen here. It doesn’t look too bad at all:

So, I wanted to go back to a bigger screen, a ‘proper’ keyboard and have a decent camera. Hence my choice of the 8310. So what have I noticed so far:

• The keyboard is great. A big improvement on the last wide Blackberry I had, the 8700g.
• It has a great feel to it, seems solid in its build
• The camera is a huge improvement on the Pearl 8100. Obviously it’s a 2MP camera now, but the interface, the larger screen and a flash that is much improved makes a huge difference
• The GPS functionality is great. I use the free Google Maps for Blackberry. When you run the application it first triangulates via mobile phone towers and locks you into around 500-1000 metres. However, in seconds, the GPS kicks in and pulls you into your actual position. I’ve seen it get as close as one metre.
• The general UI is very much improved and speed of the device is noticeably better than the Pearl. I can actually watch video and listen to music (in stereo) on my Blackberry now via my additional 1GB card
• I have a tethered modem tariff via AT&T and the speeds I get are fantastic

I’d highly recommend this Blackberry.

I now have the cleanest house in Santa Clara (probably). Our Roomba has arrived and it is very, very cool. For those of you who do not know, a Roomba is a vacuuming robot! Oh yes, there is such a thing!

It charges in the corner and then comes out at night and sneaks around our kitchen floor and lounge sucking up dust! In fact, when it’s on, it’s quite relaxing to watch. I did wonder how effective it would be, but it really is very good and we now wonder how we managed without it.

A full charge will let it clean for about two hours and it comes with ‘virtual walls’ which are infrared beams to stop the Roomba entering certain areas. When the Roomba gets tired, it just heads back to its charger and docks. Very clever.

Our two little girls aren’t sure what to make of it at the moment. I’m sure they’ll grow to love our Roomba!

http://store.irobot.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2172857&cp=2174940.2501652&parentPage=family

I’ve been splashing cash on new mobile phones of late, and it got me thinking, what’s the most expensive phone out there for general purchase?

My Blackberry was about 3% of the cost of a new Vertu Ascent phone. It doesn’t leave much change from US $6,500. Alternatively, you could get the Vertu Signature Gold for $25,000. Just imagine leaving that thing on the bus (yes, I know, if you spent $25K on a phone you’re hardly likely to take public transport)

You get more than a phone (as well you should), you get 24 hour access to a personal concierge to help with lifestyle and travel assistance.

If you really think $25K is a bit beneath you and you’re worried you co-worker might purchase one too, you could always take the customisation route.

You could visit the Millionaire’s Fair at Cannes and pick up the “Piece Unique” for $1.2 million. The “Piece Unique” handmade phone is constructed out of solid gold, is studded with diamonds and comes with a customized insurance policy.

The phone is one of three that have been produced by Swiss company GoldVish. One of the phones has been bought by a businessman in Hong Kong, the other remains unsold. It also has 100 limited edition “Plato” phones, which are encrusted with 35-carat diamonds and have a US $244,000 price tag.

Gizmondo, and a few other sites are sharing the news that a new Blackberry, the 8800, might be on the way soon. What is so cool about this new phone? It seems that it will have a camera (for pictures and video) and a full QWERTY keyboard. It will also have a pearl button instead of a side scroll wheel. Other exciting offerings include WiFi (b and g), ultra-thin thickness, media player, voice activated dialing and expandable micro-SD memory. I want one and it should be hitting the stores this spring.

One of my team members, Brian, is a fantastic cook and regularly treats us all in the office to his latest creations. Of late, Brian has focused in on chocolate making. I have to say he has excelled.

Not only are his creations fantastic, he has also launched a very comprehensive chocolate making site. Although the site is in its infancy, the site is packed with information and contributions, and is being actively read by many.

The Chocolate Gourmand site can be found here: http://www.chocolategourmand.com

I placed an order, like many people did at work, with him and was lucky to secure two tins for Christmas presents. The presentation of the tins look really professional - I just have to wait to taste the goods!

Read more about Brian’s Holiday Candy Roundup here: http://www.chocolategourmand.com/blog/?p=10

I’ve just realised it’s been over a week since my last posting. Very poor indeed! I have had a very hectic week, plus my family have been ill which has kept me very busy. No excuse in the world of blogging I know. However, we’re all back to some sense of normality now.

It’s the weekend and we’re currently out and about preparing for a house party next Friday. I’m throwing a small gathering for friends and work colleagues for Christmas. We’re currently trying to track down mince pies or just some mince for said pies in various locations…

If you’re a British ex-pat we have stumbled across a gem, The British Food Centre in Campbell. If you’re feeling homesick, they seem to have it all.

The British Food Centre
Kirkwood Plaza
1614 W. Campbell Ave
Campbell, CA 95008
Telephone +1 (408) 374 7770

http://www.buybritish.net/

The British Food Centre, Kirkwood Plaza, CA 95008

It’s Thanksgiving here tomorrow. Gearing up for the holidays and Christmas made me think selfishly, “What presents do I want?” - well I found a great site called Kaboodle.com. It allows you to effortlessly create wish lists and link to any shopping site in the world. When you paste your link, Kaboodle will be fairly intelligent and look for the right images and descriptions. You can edit if not happy. You can then share publicly your lists and even create an RSS feed.

Check out Kaboodle.com here: http://www.kaboodle.com/

And if you want to buy me something for Christmas, then click here!

The new Microsoft Zune player arrived on the market yesterday. I don’t have the new Zune player, but just out of interest, I wanted to install the Zune software to see how it compared with something like iTunes.

I didn’t get on very well. First of all, it’s a bit hit and miss whether you can find the download on the zune.net website. This might be intentional at first to limit the stress on the first day of the Zune. Once I found the download link (by chance), I downloaded and started to install.

The install took a long, long time. The first thing it did was check for application updates. The install software hung a little (even though I have a 8Mb DSL connection at home), again I put it down to first day overloads. Once the software installed, I had to reboot (annoying) - then once I signed in again, the install package started to scan my PC for songs.

I have around 8000 songs on my PC, so this was going to take some time. 1%, 2%, 3%… After one watching of the Daily Show on Comedy Central and two bottles of Amstel, the application hung on 86%. So, I skipped this search to start using the application.

Zune started up. I then thought I’d like to create a profile. Zune needs you to have a Windows Live account (which I have), I signed on - denied. I realised after a while that I hadn’t changed my Windows Passport profile in years (it was still set to the UK) - I signed into Passport and changed my details to show I was a US resident. Tried to sign in again, no such luck - denied once again.

I couldn’t use the application, it killed my PC and it was at that moment I removed Zune from my PC.

There’s an excellent first review of Zune at Engadget:

http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/15/zune-review/

http://www.zune.net

The hunt starts now. I’m trying, like another million others, to secure a Playstation 3 when it comes out on the 17th. Despite Sony assuring the general public that they’ll ship six million units by March 07, I’m not so sure!

Being an early adopter I hate the thought of having to wait to pick up a PS3! When there’s a new gadget, I have to have it immediately! So far I’ve been into Best Buy, Toys R Us, Circuit City and checked online on many authorised sites. When I walked into Toys R Us on Monday, the manager basically laughed in my face and said they only had around 17 units per store and they took all their pre-orders on the Saturday with a long, snaking queue camped outside the store the night before.

There’s a lot of websites out there trying to trick the non-savvy among us to part with their cash on fake pre-order sites. Sony are warning of pre-order scam sites. I’ve checked on eBay and things are hotting up already with many people offering their pre-sold PS3s. They have even scanned their receipts to prove everything is above board.

It’s been quite a hectic week for me this week, so this weekend has been a relaxing one. It sounds mad, but over the past year we haven’t even used our pool. So, on Saturday as the weather was great, we headed to it - and we had a fantastic time. Elysia just loves being in the pool - and I did a few laps myself!   

Sunday was quiet with a trip to Stanford Mall. Where we decided to buy a Nespresso D290. It’s a fantastic coffee machine and it will help me to get started in the morning!