Finally! Opera on Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone Edition/Windows Mobile 6 Standard

I've been waiting for this day for over half a year now. Opera in their infinite wisdom has released a beta for the windows smartphones. This has just transformed my T-mobile Dash into a much more useful tool! Check out all the details here and get yourself a free copy while its still in beta (expires June 1st). Your phone will love you for it.

WMATA and Verizon/ GSM and CDMA

Living in the DC area and close to a metro stop for both work and home has made me the default spouse to take the metro while my wife takes the car. Whilst riding the metro isn't usually a bad thing (except for the fact they blast the A/C so hard that my eyes dry out to the point of popping out of my sockets), I do get taunted by the fact that I don't have cellphone coverage down in the depths of the DC Metro tunnels. This is because I'm not "IN" the Verizon network.

This is due to my hatred for CDMA networks. I realized this years ago when Sprint had just started getting their feet wet in the wireless game and had rolled out a GSM system that they initially called "Sprint Spectrum." I loved it, even though it was something like 30 bucks for 15 minutes of airtime. However, the first incoming minute was free so I would constantly tell people to all me back after 50 seconds. And if my phone ever broke, or a nicer one came out, I didn't have to call up Sprint to get their permission to switch phones. All I had to do was pop out the SIM card from my old phone and pop it into the new one.

Then suddenly they dropped the whole GSM deal and decided to relaunch as "Sprint PCS" using a CDMA network. Which sucked. My calls were constantly being dropped, the phones were of shoddy quality, and to top it off, I had LESS control over the functions of my phone and I couldn't switch phones easily. I could see the writing on the wall, Sprint was slowly moving towards limiting what I could and could not do with my phone. I couldn't even load my own shrill ringtones onto their phones, I had to live with the default ones they gave me.

This was around the time I realized that the GSM system that I had originally come to love was still being operated! In fact, it turns out that Sprint was just leasing airtime off of Omnipoint's GSM system that was subsquently purchased by Voicestream (which was rebranded to T-mobile). With the GSM phones, I could swap out my SIM card and use a different phone each day of the week, rather being locked into one phone for the life of my contract. I also could sync my contacts, load my own ringtones, and eventually have access to the internet without having my bluetooth crippled.

Sprint and Verizon had jumped on the CDMA bandwagon by this time, and selling crippled phones that wouldn't let you transfer ringtones, sync your contacts, and if they caught you trying to tether your laptop or PDA to your phone, they'd charge you insane fees.

But now I'm riding the metro, and guess what? The only system that's underground is CDMA. So Verizon users can talk freely on the metro, and so can Sprint PCS users roaming on Verizon's network. Around 2002, there were rumblings that either AT&T or Cingular, or even T-mobile would be able to hook up a similar GSM system by 2006. Meanwhile, what was blazingly fast GPRS/EDGE speeds on my GSM system of 56k were being eclipsed by Verizon and Sprint's "broadband quality" EVDO connections.

Its now 2007 and getting online anywhere I have a cell signal at 100kbs isn't as impressive anymore and when I can't have access to it when I'm riding the metro, I'm wondering if I should switch. But then I look at the data access prices. Verizon wants 60(!) bucks to have "unlimited" data. I hear its not unlimited because if you go over 5 gigs of bandwidth in a month, they'll cut you off at their discretion. This is also before any voice minutes get added. I'm paying 63 bucks right now for 600 minutes, unlimited nights and weekends, unlimited data from my phone OR tethering via a laptop, internet tablet, PDA, etc. and I got 300 text messages coupled with 100 picture messages.

Your phone might be only as good as the network, but its not worth twice to have fast cell coverage on my commute in and out of work everyday. And having dial-up speeds seems a little more tolerable knowing I'm not paying out the nose for it. I guess I'll take that time popping my eyes back into my sockets dodging the A/C vents.

Apple TV

So Apple TV is finally shipping. And there are a flurry of posts about it. All the Apple-haters are accusing all the tech sites of being fanboys. The reality is, its a SLOW tech news week.

I however could care less about the Apple TV. Apple gets a lot of things right but the only thing they don't get right is leaving a little back door open on stuff like the iPod or the AppleTV to let advanced users take advantage of the technology. I mean, seriously, is it that difficult to incorporate other codec into the player so we could stream non-iTunes video to our Apple TV instead of having to convert everything so it'll play nice with it? Come on Apple, throw the early adopters a bone here. Lock it down once you reached the tipping point of mass appeal. Oh yeah, same goes for the iPhone. We don't want a completely impenetrable wall garden!

10.4.9! Hallelujah!

So, now that Apple has released their .9 revision of Tiger. A lot of people are stoked that OSX Leopard is ready to pounce. You know what I'm excited about? Well, for one, someone at Apple was listening to my pleas! They have inclueded Personal Area Networking in the bluetooth profile! This is such a blessing, because now I can just get online with my Powerbook or Macbook Pro via my T-mobile Dash. Before, I'd have to swap my SIM card outta the Dash and into my Sony Ericsson W600i.

Another thing that I'm reading, but haven't tested is Apple has built in VPN compatibility with Cisco VPN servers. I haven't really tested it yet, but if this is true, it would be so sweet for the job I'm doing right now since we have the option to work from home. Right now, I have to use Parallels for the Mac and run XP and use the windows version of Cisco's VPN since the VPN solution for the Mac kills my internet connection.

Now if Apple releases their MacBook Nano in the next month, I'd be set...at least for the moment.

Sporadic Tech

Having started a new job at the beginning of the year, I just haven't had the time to keep tabs on the tech news the past few months. If I had the time and the money, I'd probably be bitching up the storm about Windows Vista right now. But sadly, I've used it twice, for about a minute...at a closing Compusa and at CostCo. And really, there hasn't been anything truly groundbreaking or exciting since the announcement of the iPhone. I mean, the big news this week is Vulcan PC finally released their "palmtop computer." Of course its four years too late, and a year after the big UMPC release, it just looks dated and boring. 3GSM came and went...Zzzzz. CeBIT is next week in Germany. I'm not having any high hopes.

I keep hoping that Apple will come out with a MacBook Nano already. I've been eyeing the Sony VAIO TX computers. They're so tiny and still functional! Especially after lugging around the MacBook Pro the last 2 months, my shoulder's getting a little sore, and so is my back. There's a reason why there's a large ultraportable market Apple, get your ass in there! Otherwise, I might be forced to go back to the dark side and buy a Vista machine.

Sony Ericsson diverges

So Sony Ericsson dropped a lot of phones today. Well, figuratively, seeing how these press releases mean we the buying public won't be able to get our grubby mitts on them for another month to 6 months depending on distribution and manufacturing issues.

First off, the thing that strikes me is SE giving N. America the big F U seeing how most of their high-end (and most desirable) phones seem to be missing 2 important things. The 850mhz band which is the more prevalent band in the U.S. And lack of EDGE data connection, which again, is only used here, seeing how the rest of the world has already hopped on the 3G bandwagon, while most of the U.S. at the GSM camp, with a few market exceptions, are stuck on this "2.5" thing. Also a telling sign that SE's phones only operate on the European standard of 3G data (UTMS).

I'm also noticing something. SE has decided to make devices that are more specialized. Some are better for taking your music on the go, while others shine as cameras, while some are just dirt cheap that anyone can own a Sony Ericsson phone. Nowhere in their lineup is there a divergent phone that can really compete with something like, say, the iPhone. Most of their Symbian phones lack cameras, while the one that is supposed to be all in one (the P990) is getting kinda old. Hopefully all this will change next week at the 3GSM conference. Maybe they've got something up their sleeves they haven't shown us yet.

MacBook Pro/MacBook complaint

So after using a shiny new MacBook Pro for a week, I've found something I don't like about it. This also applies to the MacBook, since I've tried my wife's MacBook out and it has the same design flaw. The screen does not tilt back far enough. I know this because my old school twelve inch Powerbook G4 tilts back a little further. Which is something is nice to have when you're stretched out on the couch half slouched, half laying down and you wanna prop your laptop on your half propped up leg and type, not so easy. Why did Apple shorten the throw/tilt of the new macbooks? Give me back more tilt!

Update: Apparently I'm not the only one bitching about this problem. -> Link

iPhone isn't the second coming

Now that a week has passed, people have gotten over their initial high of Apple finally announcing an iPhone (I mean, come on, engadget and gizmodo are flying banners at the top of their sites for their coverage), I have somethings that might be reasons NOT to get the iPhone. Of course, there are the usual reasons that a lot of people have been whining about:

• no 3G
• only GSM
• Cingular Only (until 2009)
• No Third-Party Apps
• High Price

First thing that gets me is 2 fold. One, I'll reserve my judgement on.

Touchscreens, ok, I'm reserving my judgement on the multi-touch system, but people, myself included want to have tactile feeling when we're pushing buttons. You can't include that in a touch screen unless Apple figures out how to create some elecatrostatic-polymorphic plastic that can morph into buttons based on what's onscreen. Which brings me to my second point. Watching Steve Jobs give all his demos on the keynote, everything needs to be done with two hands. This goes against two principles of the iPods itself, and how most people use phones. They like to use it by using one hand. No one wants to walk around face buried in their iPhone and walk right into something because they had to concentrate using their phone. Also the same reason why Apple had originally had their iPods be completely touch sensitive in their third generation iPod only to "back pedal" and throw the click back into the click-wheels of the fourth gen iPod and on...til now.

Also, screens. Screens are prone to smudge and scratching. Ask anybody that bought a PSP, or even an iPod. Unless Apple was smart enough to acquire this, I smell another class-action lawsuit about people bitching how their iPhone isn't working up to their unattainable expectations.

As for them touting internet browsing. It seems like a nice idea but do I really want to treat a web page like a map where i need to crawl around the page to read snippets about it? I like Opera's approach of screen optimization. After all, mobile browsing should be simple. And the way Apple has approached it seems more of a pain than simplicity.

So, seeing how I'm not willing to switch and pay the price of breaking my T-mobile contract and probably pay twice more for the same type of phone/data service on Cingular, I'll just have to wait for an unlocked version in 2008.

Screens Screens Screens

The new Nokia N800 Internet Tablet is on the verge of getting introduced. I more or less love my Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, so I'm wondering what bump in speed or memory is under the hood. The only thing I wish my tablet could do better was to be able to view flash video a la youtube/google video and also be able to handle embedded video in Windows Media and Quicktime format.

Which got me thinking, the upcoming week is gonna be big in the tech world, seeing how both the Consumer Electronic Show is busting open their doors in Vegas while Apple is gonna have another Steve Jobs keynote at Macworld. Everyone is clamouring the next big gagdet, of which 90% or so will have to do with something about looking at a screen. Be it a smartphone, a video display that outputs 1080p clarity, a fancy tablet, etc.

And it got me thinking, is our world so dull that we need to distract ourselves with windows into virtual/fantasy worlds? Is technology and capitalism just creating a new paradigm of Plato's Cave? Is reality that harsh that we have to cling onto our techno security blankets? Maybe. After all, I have a love/hate relationship with this stuff. It excites and frustrates me at the same time. Will I be still shelling my money over for the toys that are introduced next week? Probably. Will I resent myself a bit because I could've spent the money a bit better by either traveling or paying of my debts? Maybe. I guess only time will tell. Although, most of the time, I know sinking my money into technology is sort of like drugs. They get me high for a bit, but ultimately, I'm looking for a stronger high, a bigger fix. And ultimately, I might just be a bit poorer for running in this vicious cycle.

Holiday Hiatus

With the impending holidays, me leaving my job, and just other chaotic things, postings will be sporadic for the time being.