I try to be "GREEN": Flashlights with rechargeable batteries I owned were demonstrating seriously diminished performance (they had a right to, they were ~10 years old). I opened one up to see what sort of battery it had in it, and was pleased to find, that instead of an impossible to replace proprietary battery, it was powered by 4 "AA" batteries. I went to a local Walmart where for a reasonable price, they had Kodak brand batteries, which I put in the flashlight, and the flashlight is now better than new. Similar flashlight here.
Next, what does one do with old NiCad rechargeable batteries? AT&Ts' web site says they will accept them as part of their recycling program. One minor glitch. My local company owned store rudely refused to accept said batteries.
I just sent an email to the Store manager, and everyone up the chain of command at AT&T reporting that incident. I made sure to include Steve Jobs, the local media, and Greenpeace, so they'll know about ATTs' efforts at being "GREEN".

IPhone and WiFi networks: Last week you may have read stories claiming the iPhone was causing problems for Duke University's WiFi Network. Duke after checking it all out found the real cause! Cisco !

Story here.

Vacation in Miami and Bahamas I'm about to head off to some nice beaches, and for a moment I thought I saw the Continental Airlines Deathstar emblem on the Tail of this plane on the beach.




Actual plane story here:

More on U-Verse : Seems like its unanimous. No one likes U-Verse, the TV service over phone lines from AT&T. Local newspaper technology columnist pans it here. He failed to mention it's capped at 6.0 mbps for dsl, despite using a 100 mbps pipe. Also failed to mention that Comcast TiVo hasn't seen the light of day yet. Also failed to mention that 6.0 mbps dsl is widely available on regular phone lines now, it's called dsl Elite, and I can vouch for it, I have it, it works and its great and it's cheaper than Cable.
Last person I knew who canceled their U-Verse, then found out it took them a week to get the regular dsl back up and running, and further their U-Verse installer had bollixed up ( sabotaged?) their Dish satellite wiring in their attic, requiring an Echostar service call.

iPhone Sales - First Weekend

Late Saturday I said Apple's iPhone sales would blow past 300,000 Sunday.

I was wrong.

The Los Angeles Times says the correct Final Number
for the three day weekend is:

525,000

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-iphone2jul02,1,4774908.story?ctrack=1&cset=true


By Sunday every California Apple store was sold out of iPhones ! ! !


AT&T didnt remember the lessons of when Porting started 3 years ago, and some Activations got delayed over porting issues.

If you live on Dixie Farm Road, but Verizon goes to PORT you and
you told the computer you live on Dixie Farm Rd, it wont match !!!

And with AT&T stripping all discounts from Account and refusing to
allow iphones on Business Accounts, I wonder if the real reason is:
Is Apple getting 10% of all Service revenue from iPhones rebated?
And since there is no discount for signing up for 2 years, maybe the $150
discount one might have traditionally got is going to Apple.


LATE NEWS July 2 : WooHoo - AT&T will give me free access to its WiFi hot spots since
I have High Speed dsl from AT&T. Story here. Almost reason enough to get iPhone.

Followup July 4 : all Texas Apple stores are now sold out of iPhones. By now
we learn most folks having trouble activating their iPhone, it's due to one cause -
USER ERROR. Some want to activate on a business account - which AT&T isn't allowing and told everyone that. Others submit data that won't allow a credit check, or insufficient or incorrect information to Port a phone number from a different cellular carrier. Turns out it's not AT&T's fault in most cases in the small minority of cases where activation doesn't take only a few minutes.

iPhone - First day happenings: According to Apples' web site indication of iPhone availability, not a single Apple store sold out the first day. Despite a number of sales that Apple was prepared for, AT&T couldn't handle it. A unique procedure was set up for activation. You'd use the new iTunes 7.3 (a free download) plug your iPhone into its dock, which would be plugged into your computer, and with a Broadband connection they'd step you through some questions, pass you off to AT&Ts' computers and you'd get an email, which would have a link a finish the activation and get your phone live. Many folks didn't get their email after 10+ hours of waiting. Apparently AT&Ts ' computers got swamped. Postings here, here, here and here

MS Windows Vista Grief : Even computer experts have problems installing Vista. Read stories here and here.

Dell sees the light on decrapification? : February 3, 2007 we wrote about all the Bloatware new Dell computers come loaded with, and how someone even wrote a freeware program to allow removal of all that junk that only slows down ones' computer. First it was Dell only, and then a generic version to clean any new PC of unwanted crap software. Now according to news reports, many new Dell computers will come preloaded with software to perform such decrapification, only it's called "preinstalled software" by Dell.
The real decrapifier will do a better job of removing the Bloat, not leaving behind the "Google Toolbar" !!

To heck with Norton Internet Security: I had upgraded my Intel based MacPro's Window's XP Hard Disk to Norton Internet Security 2007 from Symantec (which I had bought for "Free" after Rebate) from Frys. It was not pretty. Three hours to Install, and multiple reboots with all the updates it required before it decided it was fully installed and updated. Even after all that it was unstable, at random time it would announce it had an Error and wouldn't "AutoProtect", it also refused to allow Microsoft Messenger to run. And following Symantecs' instructions and running a "Check" program failed to help, only a system reboot would get it going again. Finally after I read some reviews, I uninstalled Norton (requiring a special download of a special Symantec uninstaller). And I bought and installed Kaspersky AntiVirus v. 6. It seems far more stable, allows MS Messenger to run, and a virus scan found 11 (thankfully old, archived and unused) items Norton had missed. According to one review test and another test Kaspersky is better than Norton and even scans significantly faster than Norton.

Buying a new computer: Many's the time I've been asked, and have volunteering to help a friend or colleague buy a new computer. Sometimes I talk them out of a laptop due to their fragility, sometimes I have them order extra memory, every case is unique. Now I see posted, many useful tips from a former Dell employee. Read it here:

Best speed improvment for Internet Access since Broadband ! : A broadband hookup (I love my dsl. I wish AT&T would get fiber to my door so they could match Verizon's 30 Mbps) speeds up Internet surfing. The weak link now commonly is your ISP's DNS (Domain name Server), they have zero incentive to make it as fast as possible, and often (as in AT&T'/Yahoo's case) it's much slower than it should be. A DNS translates a http address into an IP number so your browser can connect you.
There is now a solution to this issue. Don't use AT&T's DNS, replace it with those of Opendns.com , who work hard at having the fastest possible DNS.
If you are in a hurry for your speed up, just change your network settings to manually selected DNS, with the addresses of:
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

and watch your internet surfing speed up. More cautious, just go to the Opendns website.

Most of the rest you wanted to know about the iPhone : AT&T Sales Training Workbook for the iPhone is out on the web, with lots of information. Read it here. It could be not on the web soon.

Manhattanhenge : Learn something new every day. I spent the first 21 years of my life in New York City, saw a beautiful eclipse of the Sun on sunrise June 30, 1954, but never knew about Manhattanhenge, named after Stonehenge. Twice a year the rise and setting of the sun aligns with the grid of New York City. One pcture of the phenomena is here.

A pox on all them Presidential candidates. Some dirt on each of your favorites can be found here.

iPhone lacks fastest Internet connectivity. "3G" is the fastest service AT&T has, but the iPhone lacks that capability. It will use EDGE, AT&T's last years' best thing. Latest word is that AT&T is allowing EDGE more bandwidth that had been restricted to voice by adding more capacity to towers. Story here.

AT&T CRAMS my bill: In the High Speed Internet section there's an incorrect, bogus charge for "Sales Tax", obviously fraudulent, as when taxes are totaled at the bottom, they total $0.00; a phone call to their billing department (with 14 minutes on hold) confirms the incorrectness of the charge, and their instant willingness to credit back the charge means they know is wrong, so why wait for customers to complain? Just a scam to make millions extra with a WHOOPS charge? Email to AT&T corporate HQ are ignored. Time to go public?

Click here for what I think of AT&T.

I like DirecTv, but.. For me DirecTv has proven to be far, far better than Warner Cable, but I'm glad their screwup of June 2 didn't happen to me: Reported on USENET:

Was anyone else watching the History Channel on the evening of June 2
when, about 90 minutes into a two hour program, the screen suddenly went
blank and the receiver demanded payment of $34.95 to watch this "pay per
view" program?

This wasn't a receiver problem, as all my receivers were doing it. I also
tried resetting the receiver.

Thanks for your loyalty: That's included in BOT email answers from AT&T which provided no reason for loyalty Friday. My phone line goes dead. I use my cell to call their 800 "Repair" number, and immediately told "There's a long delay due to heavy call volume", that's there whenever one calls. Then I'm told it'll be quicker to report an outage online. Duh, if my phone line is dead my dsl is dead. Finally they indicate my line should be fixed by 5 PM Sunday; makes me think I'm working with the Bulgarian National Central Services.
To add insult to injury, my first bill for "Dsl Elite" (6.0 mb/s) over charges me, and I get to email my favorite lady in their Executive Offices who after checking all day confesses I'm right, they're wrong and she'll give me credits. Of course she doesn't say when these credits will appear on my account, which translate into "maybe on your next bill", There's a new invention out that would allow AT&T to apply credits in Real Time. It's called a "computer".
This sort of poor service they expect loyalty for?

Low priced PCs : I read where Dell computer will soon be selling its low priced PCs at Walmart. I have some recent experience with a low priced Acer T690 purchased at Walmart that I helped a friend set up. They had bought it while Walmart had it on sale for $599.99. Certainly a great price for a fast PC (Pentium-D at 3 Ghz, 2 generations old, but plenty fast) with MS Windows Vista Home Premium installed, and a 19" wide screen LCD monitor that has speakers built in. Obviously at that price a few corners were cut other than the CPU. It comes with 1 Gig of RAM, but can only be upgraded to 2 Gig, and that requires replacing 512 Meg sticks with 1 Gig sticks. My friend was happy that I found them such upgrade memory at buy.com for about half the price of BestBuy. The other corner cut was with Video. It has an Intel video chip on the motherboard which uses System Memory, but luckily the motherboard has a PCI-E slot that would accept any much faster Video card with its own RAM, and I identified an NVidia 8400 Video Card at Buy.com for under $90 with free shipping, which tested out at 4.5 on a Vista speed rating. When we installed the video card, the motherboard/BIOS was smart enough to turn off the motherboard video and use the Video Card, so no BIOS setting changes or jumper settings were needed.
The Acer has an ASUS motherboard using an Intel chipset (similar to the N4L-VM DH) , so it has USB 2.0, Firewire, and Sata connections. Apparently competition has gotten to the point that even the low ball Hitachi 250 Gig Hard Drive that came in the computer was a 300 Mhz one, and provided for fast read/writes. The packaging box didn't say so, but also on the motherboard is 10/100/1000 Ethernet. The motherboard has only 2 standard PCI slots, and one is taken up by a PCI standard Acoustic modem. It does have a Realtek sound chip for audio.
SETUP: We ran Decrapifier on the hard drive, downloaded myriad Microsoft Windows updates and patches, and an update for the 3 month Norton AV 2007 that came preinstalled. We installed Acrobat Reader. Then we changed the screen saver from one that runs Acer commercials, set the screen for thousands of colors instead of millions, and defragged the hard drive. The 3 cooling fans inside the box ran quietly. It comes with software to create a restore DVD (or 7 CD disk restore) from NTI. Easy to do with the Lite-On DVD burner in the machine.

T.V. over phones lines ? Verizon seems to have the best plans cause they wire fiber to your door. AT&T wants to use copper the last mile, and therefore has to cap its Internet download speed at 6000 kb/s, the same as I get now from them without fiber. AT&T's service, known as U-Verse is described here. Like other new high tech services it sounds like they could break their arm patting themselves on the back. Folks I know who have (or had) U-Verse in the Willowbrook section of Houston, complain about reliability. Here's a review from a like minded fellow. Forty-eight hour outages do not win friends. Reminds me of the early days of Internet over Cable. Some folks can wait a day to email a child at school, but if they miss their Grey's Anatomy, thats more serious.