Posted by Henry Butz on May 31, 2006 at 10:14:17:
Tell me how a $35/month cell phone contract costs me $60/month. I was bored one day and called Sprint to review my plan. Rather than saving me money by advising me on a plan which suits my needs, they suckered me into a 2-year contract which is nearly twice as expensive as the previous one.
All these cell phone companies are cut-throat. My very first cellular phone service was with AT&T. Through my college Alumni Association, I was offered a great deal on a phone - a Motorola StarTAC, black with lighted keypad, plus 100 minutes per month for about $30. (This goes back a few years, so forgive me if I have some of the numbers slightly askew). I was happy. This old phone was part of a dying analog system, as most people had already switched to digital. Digital was around, but the coverage was poor at the time. I figured I didn't need digital coverage.
My first disappointment was with the model of the phone. I had visited Motorola's website and downloaded the specs on the StarTAC phone. It had lots of bells and whistles, including vibrate. But, I couldn't figure out how to put my phone on vibrate. Apparently, and nobody told me this - the StarTAC came in different flavors. I had the StarTAC 6000, which did not have vibrate at all. The specs on Motorola website was for the high-end model, the 8500/8600. Different models were targeted towards different networks, such as GSM or TDMA. But, AT&T apparently customized their model phone to be as cheap as possible.
My second disappointment was that phone kept turning itself off without warning. I missed a lot of calls. And, my third and final disappointment was when I saw my monthly bill. I had signed up for "100 minutes." I figured the minutes would refresh back to "100" at the start of the month like every other plan out there. Oh no. When you used up 100 minutes, you were then billed at .20 cents a minute thereafter for the rest of your contract. Keep those phone calls short! AT&T got sued over that one.
I would have changed plans and kept AT&T, but I didn't like my phone turning itself off. I switched to Sprint's TimePort, which is an upgraded StarTAC. I asked them about their email to SMS gateway. They said, "duh?" AT&T had a neat way to send messages to the phone from an email address. This was becoming popular. I used the SMS email gateway to keep in touch with people entering email from my website, so I knew when I had important messages waiting for me (but, I could not reply from the phone). Sprint kind of knew what I was talking about, but the salespeople were generally unfamiliar with all the particulars.
There was a section on Sprint's website which allowed people to enter messages directly. I could link to the script from my own website. This sort-of vanished one day without warning. Next, SMS messages were being truncated to 90 characters. Other services gave people up to 160 characters, nearly double what I could get from Sprint. Also, one day without warning, Sprint began deleting any message which was longer than 90 characters, so I missed a LOT of messages. In fact, I had signed up for weather alerts from Yahoo via SMS. Two years later, I had failed to receive even one message (I forgot I left it on). Next, I had SMS alerts from Travelocity. When traveling, all I needed to do was turn my cell phone on at the airport and I would instantly be aware of gate assignments, delays, connections, etc. The last time I traveled, I received no alerts at all... until I was back home, a week after I finished traveling. Then, Sprint finally delivered all the useless messages to me. Finally, Sprint broke my text messaging altogether after I switched to a "better plan." I had to sign up for "Wireless web" to receive any messages at all, which cost more money per month. A fast-talking salesperson tacked "this and that" onto my plan until I was being ripped off entirely.
Let's touch briefly on Sprint's billing. Nearly every bill I can remember had a due date of Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. Since banks are typically closed on weekends, if you don't pay your bill electronically by Wednesday then they would probably charge you a late fee. After many angry letters and phone calls, I finally switched to automatic billing to a credit card. They wouldn't budge on the late fee, which was only a few bucks. Now, I'm going with t-mobile, who has better customer service.
I've had the service for a few weeks, so the "Jury is still out" on this one. I couldn't log into my account on-line for a week. And, when I did, I found out they gave me the wrong plan entirely. To their credit, a few phone calls and emails got it straightened out. Customer service has been highly responsive. Ok. I'll let the quirks slide for now.
I went with the t-mobile MDA with the slide-out keyboard. It's known as the MDA-IV, or MDA-(5), or just MDA. They apparently didn't know what to call it, since Europe has a much better model than in the US. It runs on WM5 - Windows Mobile 5. This is Microsoft's unified mobile platform for the CE-2000/2002/2003/Pocket PC which has been driving developers nuts for years. But, why Microsoft? Because the Treo-700 went from Palm to WM5. I figured it was a sign of things to come. Treo then released a Palm version right after I bought my MDA (oh well). Linux came, then went, and is not threatening to come back again. Oh man - a Linux OS on an MDA? What could be sweeter? Maybe next year. There are one or two others which I know nothing about.
Palm is ok. But, it's basically a closed system. The OS does not know what a ".txt" file is or a ".pdf" file. It does not have a file system at all. If you want to put a file into the Palm, it must be associated with one and only one application which uses it as a data file. So, to read a plain text file, you first have to install a text file reader. Then, you upload the text file which becomes associated with the reader. It's... inconvenient but it works.
WM5 introduces web browsing, dynamic file structures, and a real file system. It's more like a personal computer than a PDA. And, it would be great if everything worked - but, that's not the case either. They lie to you. My device has all the bells and whistles: wireless web access, SMS, MMS, POP, SMTP, FTP, Infrared, 802.11b/hotspot, and bluetooth. It's a mean, lean communications machine. Pity that it's running Windows.
The first disappointment was the built-in calculator program. Maybe this was meant as a joke? But, the default calculator for WM5 does basic grade school math - almost useless. I didn't even open the CD which has ActiveSync on it, since there was all kinds of warnings about program activation, Microsoft hellish licensing, and many other ugly warnings. I had to purchase a Mini-SSD memory card at my own expense, going with a Kingston 1gig flash card with an adapter so I can read it with my ssd card reader. It came pre-formatted, thankfully since Microsoft provides no way to do this from the PDA. I experimented with NTFS briefly, but WM5 simply does not see the card if it's not formatted FAT32. It's yet another way Microsoft attempts to chain you to a desktop PC.
I installed a utility to format storage cards, as well as an FTP client to move files to and from the PDA. ActiveSync 4 removes the PDA backup feature, thereby only sync'ing up to the desktop Outlook and Media Player DRM nonsense. I use neither, which makes ActiveSync worthless to me. I had to purchase a backup program to do what ActiveSync is supposed to, but now I can simply backup to the storage card. If the PDA goes dark, I simply pop the card into a new device and three mouse clicks later I'm back and running.
You see - back a few years, I had the Handspring Visor. It had the same Palm OS and hardware, but was much cheaper. It also used batteries instead of unreliable rechargeable's. I stored all my phone numbers on the Visor. One day, I was sitting in front of a locked art gallery in New York City. I had the phone number of someone to call in my PDA. I whipped it out and pressed the "ON" button. After a momentary flash of text, -poof- the batteries went dead. All my memory was wiped clean. I sat in front of that locked door with the phone number hours away back on a desktop PC. Never again would I rely on such a device or be tethered to a desktop PC. Some years went by and I decided to use my Visor again. I put it into the USB cradle and pressed the sync button. Nothing happened. Dead. I had no idea what the problem was. Without "sync" working, these Palm devices are useless. When I heard the term "Microsoft ActiveSync" I knew it was going to be an uphill battle to beat this phone into doing what I needed it to do.
One of the first utilities I installed was email. I just refuse to use Outlook unless someone holds a gun to my head. The most highly rated was FlexMail. Aside from a few bugs (which I reported) the program is wonderful for email. It also attempts to SMS, but it's not so good at SMS messages. For some reason, more than half of my SMS messages to chat servers, such as Yahoo and AIM, would be bounced as "Invalid command". FlexMail also overwrites the link to the default SMS system, which forced me to hack the device to repair the link (took a few days to figure it out). FlexMail also does not take much advantage of the cursor keys on WM5 devices.
Which brings us to Yahoo and AIM chat. My phone was bundled with OZ's chat app. I guess it works. In fact, from the brief times I got it to work, it works great. But, nobody tells you that you must have an Internet connection to use the chat client. It uses some SMS commands, but the bulk of messaging is done via a very slow Internet connection. This works fine on the SideKick, which is connected all the time to the Internet. But, for anything - such as WM5 phones, it blows chunks. I would get an SMS message telling me to log into the Internet to see what message was just sent to me. At this point, I might was well go back to email, which is just as fast!
What nobody tells you is that you don't need any fancy client to chat on Yahoo or AIM. All you need is SMS. Yahoo is nice and simple, while AIM is complex and flexible. Chatting on AIM via SMS is just punishing, unless you enjoy memorizing dozens of commands and half a dozen server addresses. Yahoo has one address and the commands are "in", "out", "get", "ignore", and "to". I won't get into AIM commands, since I'd get tired of typing... but, there's an 18 page pdf users manual for AIM SMS if you're interested (I swear it's 18 pages long!)
Which brings us to the bundled software - Clearview PDF Reader. What a load of garbage this is. Upon reading the 18 page AIM manual, it mucks up the text making it difficult to read some sections. And, the 500k pdf file of the NYC Subway system which I snatched from the MTA? Forget about it - it won't even load. I tried various pdf readers, but nothing worked. There's a neat project on sourceforge using opensource code, but it takes sooooooo long to read and zoom into the document - we're talking about 1-2 minutes per button click! Finally I discovered that Adobe released a pocket reader, but you have to have ActiveStink installed to extract the ".cab" file.
Here's a neat thing. To install software on WM5, all you need is a ".cab" file in the proper format for your processor (often it's the ARM flavour). Click, done. If you want Windows to NOT delete the .cab file, simply mark the file as Read-Only... uh, but Microsoft does not give you that ability. The file browser on WM5 is a joke with Microsoft laughing in your face for having it. I found Total Commander, which is 1) Simply amazing and 2) Free. Thank-you thank-you. Adobe Acrobat reader for Mobile works wonderfully - although, I can't seem to open the reader by clicking on a .pdf file. I have to open the reader first, then the file. No biggie.
But, I digress. Most PDA software is still being delivered with .exe files, which must be run on a Windows PC and must be run with ActiveStink installed. I half-installed ActiveStink, meaning that I used my personal firewall to deny run privileges to most of the drivers. Then, I neutered the software by copying over USB drivers with a dummy .exe program. These drivers are loaded upon start-up, but Microsoft buries them so deep in the registry that it's really ugly to find... and, if you manage to find it and disable it, you'll probably bring down the entire USB subsystem. It also adds some Windows Explorer .dll's as well. What an ugly mess. All I want to do is get my hands on a few .cab files without using ActiveStink. I do hope marketing people are listening! ActiveStink is not an option. I did NOT buy a mobile PDA just to be chained to a desktop PC. What don't you understand? My mobile device is mobile, not tethered to my desktop nor will it ever be. I use FTP for files (or a card reader in a pinch). I can restore the entire PDA from the storage card, something which ActiveStink can no longer do in version 4. The "MAC people" have a neat program called Juicer, which pulls out the .cab files from the Windows .exe setup programs. I spoke with the developer, who seems like a nice guy. He said he has no plans to write Juicer for Windows. I can't blame him.
Let's talk about Multi-media. You know how Windows Media Player is a bloated piece of spyware? Well, their mobile WMP is almost as bad. Every movie I watch has out of sync video/audio. The picture freezes up at times, often requiring me to replay videos twice just to "wake it up" or something. Horrible. On sourceforge, there's a neat utility called Media Player Classic, which is version 6 or 7 retrograde to Media Player before they put all the DRM and playlist crap into it. Unfortunately, Media Player Classic is made for the PC, not WM5 - but, I'm keeping an eye on it.
As for performance, the MDA is kinda neat. To get my email, I need a good, strong cellphone signal with GPRS, which isn't always possible. At work and at home, I use a wireless access point to get a great connection. On the road, GPRS may be quicker than driving all the way home to read email, but it really depends on how good of a signal you have. On hbutz.com, I monitor my emails and the server SMS's me with the first two lines of important emails (used to be one line when I was on Sprint). So, even if I can't read the entire message, I can "get the gist of it" via SMS. I've also added some SMS entry pages on hbutz.com so you folks with something important to say can contact me quickly. I've added some security features to fend off spam bots (you know you are) and I hope I don't have to disable SMS entirely as the bots are getting smarter. Like, if you SMS me about some porno site, do you REALLY think I'm going to patronize it? You're out of your minds.
Ok, so back to chat. I really wanted a way to chat with people on my cell phone. I guess the only way is via SMS, but I have to give out my mobile number. I digress. Sprint phone to phone SMS never worked. People have told me they've attempted to send SMS to my Sprint phone, but it never gets there. It wound up lost, just like all those lost weather reports. Yahoo and AIM chat clients use the Internet, not SMS for the bulk of their messaging - and, mostly to update the stupid buddy list. I cannot find a GUI type chat which only uses SMS, so I've resorted to using the system SMS... which FlexMail has snatched away from me. I swear I put a link to the basic SMS system to bypass FlexMail, but it was deleted. I now have several copies of the shortcut.
I have never had good luck with voice activated stuff. The microphone on the MDA is really crappy. After adding voice commands for dialing and running applications, I had to remove most of them. I would speak the command, "Photographs" and it would think I said, "Phone Bill." Almost useless. You can't be sure that the person you want to call is the person the phone will actually dial, or that application commands won't dial random people in your address book. So, what good is it? And, it's got a built-in digital camera. If you absolutely, positively need to capture an image - like if need to document a car accident or if you see a topless beauty sunbathing at the beach, then it's ok. Otherwise, it's just a useless marketing ploy to get rubes to send MMS messages for an extra fee. As a photographer, I have been to many places which prohibit cameras - locker rooms, military installations, federal buildings, etc. It's a liability I would like the option to decline.
I'm still looking for a good book on registry hacks. Microsoft does not give you a registry editor at all for WM5, but I have a few apps which do that as well. Hell, t-mobile didn't even give me a copy of the phone manual. I had to get it from their website, although it's probably on the ActiveStink CD somewhere. All they gave me as a stinking start-up guide, which forces you into doing things their way (not my way). I guess tech support doesn't want to get flooded with phone calls from people hacking their phone.
The MDA running WM5 is not an easy device to setup. If you don't want to bother with the Internet or ActiveStink, and if you just want a phone with some cool features, SMS, and a few utilities, then I suppose you don't have to understand how the rest of it works. Being a photographer, I really loved the PowerPoint player - wow, something Microsoft did right. Although it's a bitch trying to write a ppt presentation, I've hacked out a few slide shows for prospective clients. All I need to do is tap on the screen and hand them them the PDA. Takes a ton of memory, but the storage card bears the burden.
You know what I really like about the MDA? The blinking green light. When it blinks green, I have no email. When it blinks orange, I have a message or an appointment to attend to. And, when it's not blinking, then I'm in trouble. Wonderful. (but, I'd like to disable the stupid blinking blue light when bluetooth is enabled!)