Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Sprint USB EV-DO + Cradlepoint personal hotspot = sweet!

I was traveling this morning, and was shocked to not be able to check on my flight status with my iPhone. It just sat there churning when I arrived in Chicago. I couldn’t figure it out, but quickly booted up the Cradlepoint router and Sprint EV-DO card and was online. Since I also had critical work-related email to respond to, I would have been seriously upset if I didn’t have backup connectivity.

It turns out that AT&T’s network was out in quite a few locations. Although I didn’t see Chicago on he lists at first, it was definitely down this morning at 7 local time!

I guess my iPhone’s camera wasn’t the only thing on the fritz in Chicago!

You've got voicemail!

I have long felt that voicemail was archaic.  Like fax machines, voice mail systems seem stuck in an earlier era, with arcane controls and so little feedback that the user has no idea if their attempt at communication has been successful.  In fact, I was long loath to trust voice mail systems at all, instead just asking people to call my other numbers or email me.

With this in mind, I was impressed by Apple’s reinvention of voice mail with the iPhone.  Although the Visual Voicemail feature is widely recognized as referring to the interactive table of voice messages shown in the phone, their implementation goes well beyond that, offering all I wanted in a voice mail system.  Indeed, although I was considering other systems prior to getting the iPhone, I have since settled on Apple’s simple but effective system.

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Translation: American Airlines does not want my business anymore

I once enthused about my favorite travel sites, and among these was Kayak.com, the AJAX-y Web 2.0 travel search engine that I use to find flights. The thing I love about Kayak is that I can literally slide the dials to look for just the right departure time, connections, and even planes to make sure things work out.

But American Airlines recently decided that it didn’t like paying Kayak for referrals, and has apparently pulled its listings, even through third parties like Orbitz. Now, Southwest never included listings on Kayak, but that was no great loss to me. But I’m an American elite (Gold) and they were my strong number two airline choice. I was even thinking of shifting more business their way! But thanks to their spat over a few dollars of commission, they’re unlikely to get much more business from me.

The ironic thing is, I never used Kayak for bookings anyway! I always shifted over to my page at aa.com to buy the tickets, since it ensured that I got the right flight, codes, and instructions. So they never lost a dollar of my business to Kayak.

US Airways is becoming the Ryanair of the US!

Air travel really is getting rapidly worse. The other day I was forced to fly cross country on US Airways, and it was just depressing. The flight attendants had to pitch credit card applications over the PA and in the aisles, they charged $2 for a bottle of water or cup of coffee, and there were ads on the tray tables. Oh, and US Airways doesn’t do planeside check - they require you to check your bags through (and pay a hefty charge) if they don’t fit.

Something has to change here. The airlines are almost bankrupt, yet there is a huge volume of travelers who must get from place to place. Service is dropping, passengers are unhappy, and no one is doing anything about it. Virgin America and JetBlue seem to be eating everyone’s lunch right now, but it won’t be long before they’re in trouble, too. And I can’t fly them anyway, since neither comes to Ohio. Something’s gotta give…

Do you know that need email archiving but just can’t get the project off the ground? I’ll be presenting a one-hour webinar called “Getting Your (Email Archiving) Project Approved” next Wednesday, August 27 at 1 PM Eastern time.

The session is presented by Mimosa, but the content is independent, so you won’t hear me pitch log shipping or trashing other vendors. Instead, I’ll focus on the benefits and beneficiaries of email archiving and how to make this critical technology a priority for the business, not just IT.

If you would like to attend, please register for the session at On24.

Sprint USB EV-DO + Cradlepoint personal hotspot = sweet!

Goodbye, AT&T 3G! After a year of hoping coverage would improve, I finally jumped ship from AT&T’s 3G network and moved my mobile wireless broadband service to Sprint. I grabbed a refurbished USB EV-DO device and signed up through a no-contract reseller and couldn’t be happier with the service so far. And I picked up a Cradlepoint router at the same time, giving me a portable Wi-Fi hotspot so any device I have (or a friend has) can get online at broadband speed from anywhere. Awesome!

So, yeah, my headline is a little misleading. But it’s true - rather than buy a 3G iPhone in my 3G-starved hometown, I decided to kill all of my mobile connectivity woes at once, including stepping up to 3G speeds on the iPhone. Read on for details about what was wrong with AT&T Laptop Connect, why I selected Sprint, the Cradlepoint PHS300 router, and how to get all of this with no contract.

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I recently mentioned how impressed I was with the speed of my MacBook, even when running Windows in Boot Camp. Of course, this was a subjective feeling, so I decided to try timing some events to see if the clock agreed with my brain. Sure enough, the Mac is faster than my Dell XPS M1330 by a good margin. But I was surprised to learn that Vista, even in Ultimate guise, wasn’t half bad, either. The root of my performance gripes seems to be what happens after Vista is booted - after the desktop appears, all OSes spend time doing something in the background, but Vista spends much more time.

My test was simple: I used the iPhone’s stopwatch to time the following key events after startup:

1. The Mac Gong or disappearance of the PC or VMware BIOS screen
2. The appearance of the login box (I paused the timer at this point to give me time to enter my password)
3. The appearance of the desktop
4. I then clicked on the icons to launch my mail and web browser apps, assuming this would be the first thing most people would do on startup, and timed how long it took for each to load and present content
5. Finally, I stopped the clock when the system appeared usable - hourglasses disappeared, the disk stopped chugging like crazy, and all background apps had loaded and were running
6. I also timed how long it took for the system to power down after ordering a shutdown

Not surprisingly, the MacBook with OS X was fastest, though it took a surprisingly longish time to get Mail and Safari launched compared to Firefox and Outlook in Windows. OS X also excels at knocking off the backup tasks and giving a stable, ready-to-use system.

Booting Windows Vista Ultimate in Boot Camp was surprisingly speedy, too, and this was the core of my test. The Mac gave me a working Windows environment in just 2:15, compared to 1:40 for OS X and 3:10 for my Dell XPS M1330. I’m not sure exactly what the Dell is doing, but it churns and chugs for quite a while on bootup, even after I stopped the clock, and it’s got a nice clean install with few apps running.

Finally, I timed my Boot Camp volume in VMware Fusion (1.1.3) and found that, although it was speedy enough when it was running, it took 30 seconds longer to get started than booting natively. But even Fusion was quicker than the Dell.

My feeling is that Microsoft has spent some time optimizing the startup experience in Vista, trimming the time it takes to get a login window and desktop by shifting some work to background tasks that interfere with usability once the system appears to be running. A clever trick, that, but one that frustrates me on a daily basis as I stare at a desktop full of icons that I can’t use quite yet.

Once again, this is not the most scientific test ever, but it helps to show what I feel about the Mac:

• It’s quicker when I want to sit down and start working
• Windows is much quicker on the Mac than the Dell, despite only slightly better specs (2.2/4 GB vs. 2.0/2 GB)

I ran each test a few times, and although they varied by a few seconds they were fairly consistent.

The glorious Victorinox Swiss Army CyberTool 34: Geek's best friend or security's worst nightmare?

Aah, security. It seems that, in the last decade, the balance between liberty and security in the United States has tilted rather strongly, to the point that we expect to be scanned and have our possessions confiscated before entering buildings. Such was the case when my family and I made our pilgrimage to the Empire State Building in New York, separating me from my beloved Victorinox CyberTool after 10 years of loyal service. It’s a good thing they took it away, too!

I had planned on using the built-in pozidrive, Torx, and Phillips (#0 and #1) bits to dismantle the building and take it home with me. The pliers and scissors might have helped there, too. And since they didn’t confiscate (or really even thoroughly check) my bag, the corkscrew, bottle opener, and can opener might have allowed me to get wild with the Chardonnay and Vienna sausages while I was working! Good thing it packs a toothpick and tweezers, too, since those things can be dangerous. And if anyone tried to stop me, I would have had my choice of 1.5″ or 2.5″ blades to “defend” myself!

Or perhaps I could have used the tiny screwdriver to fix my glasses and the scissors to snip the end off of my kids’ drinking straws to make it easier for them to enjoy lunch. Either way, we’re all safer now that my CyberTool is forever in the hands of the professionals on 34th street. Just don’t let them know that Amazon delivered a new Onyx CyberTool 34 last week!

Here’s a surprise benefit from the iPhone 2.0 Exchange ActiveSync ability: I was able to finally move my iPhone’s “home” sync from the PC to the Mac!

I’m a long-time iPhone user and new Mac switcher, but since I use the phone for business (read Exchange) email, contacts, and calendars, I was stuck syncing it to the (work) PC instead of the (home) Mac.  This really wasn’t optimal, as it meant I needed to load all of my songs and movies on the work machine, which is a serious no-no for my “keep ‘em separated” computing preferences. But the iPhone has to be synced to a single machine, and since I needed to be able to keep my contacts and calendars up to date, I was stuck.

All this changed with 2.0’s over-the-air sync ability, though. Once you enable Exchange ActiveSync (or MobileMe, for that matter), you no longer have to tie the iPhone to Outlook. So now I am able to sync my work contacts, email, and calendar to Exchange and my songs, ringtones, apps, and movies to my Mac! Joy!

I first noticed this shortly after my 2.0 upgrade and ActiveSync activation. I docked the iPhone to the Mac to download some photos with iPhoto, and I noticed that iTunes would let me “sync” it there, even though it was “paired” to the PC. Although I had selected “manually manage music”, I couldn’t drag and drop songs or videos, but I noticed that the calendar, contacts, and mail sync settings were now grayed out. This got me thinking, so I decided to take the plunge and blow away all of my content in order to really sync the phone to the Mac. Sure enough, my mail, contacts, and calendars remain connected to Exchange, but everything else now lives on the Mac.

I wonder if Apple considered this implication when they released Exchange ActiveSync. After all, it would seem to tie the phone more strongly to Microsoft but actually has the exact opposite effect. I don’t need a Windows PC at all anymore!

I’ve now been a Mac user for two months. Since I switched primarily to get access to Apple’s excellent hardware, I thought I would issue an update on my observations about it at this point. I should note that I’m limiting this post to the hardware (maybe I’ll cover OS X some other time), and that I’m using a maxed-out Late-2007 2.2 GHz MacBook Pro.

Although some shortcomings have appeared, I’m pleased with the Mac overall. It definitely met my expectations and continues to meet my needs, mixing portability and performance in an excellent package.  I am impressed by Apple’s hardware design and component choices, especially when compared to other computers with similar specifications that I have used.  And, as noted by Tom’s Hardware, the specification of the machine was reasonably priced, especially since I purchased it at a substantial discount and upgraded it myself.

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It’s Olympics time, but despite high tech elements, it’s still tough to watch what you want.  NBC has scheduled more coverage than ever, but much is delayed and none is properly listed in guide services.  And TiVo’s Olympics Guru Guide is worse than useless in so many ways.

Here’s the rundown about what you have to do and why:

1. If you have an HD TiVo, don’t use the Guru Guide.  It’ll only record in SD, even if you removed those channels from your lineup!  Oh, and that Guru Guide doesn’t show up on the TiVo web site anyway!
2. Consider getting a DVR Expander hard drive for your Series 3 or HD TiVo (if you don’t already have one) because NBC is scheduling their Olympic coverage in massive 5- to 7-hour blocks and cutting between sports.  So if you want to watch anything, you’ll be recording multiple blocks at 35 GB to 49 GB a pop!
3. Olympics coverage is showing up on NBC, Universal, USA, CNBC, MSNBC, Telemundo, and Oxygen, as well as two new special HD channels that you probably don’t receive.  Good luck keeping it all straight!
4. TiVo has the coverage on NBC HD, Universal HD, and USA HD listed as “XXIX Summer Olympics“, but with conflicting episode numbers.  So there’s an episode 1 of this “show” listed on each of the three channels and all are different!  This will break your season pass.
5. How about a wishlist?  TiVo is including individual sports events in the “show” descriptions, so you could set a wishlist for “Olympics Swimming”, but again, it’ll record a massive 8-hour chunk of programming on Saturday, taking up 56 GB of disk space for a single event.
6. I decided to set a max-priority season pass for the main NBC HD channel for “XXIX Summer Olympics”, keeping 5 episodes and recording only first-run, which will get the main popular/USA-dominated sports and the opening ceremony.  I also set lowest-priority “record all” season passes on UHD and USAHD keeping 2 to catch some more.  This ought to slurp down the space on my Series 3’s 500 GB Western Digital expander drive in no time!
7. If you want to get really tricky you could consult NBC’s online schedule and set manual recordings for events.  But don’t count on NBC actually showing things when they’re scheduled…

What are your ideas?  Or will you just give up and watch the games on YouTube, Bittorrent, or follow on the official site?