Life and times of palmsolo (aka Matthew Miller) » Travel

Leaving Las Vegas

palmsolo — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 02:07:41 +0000

Leaving Las Vegas,
originally uploaded by palmsolo.

It was a crazy couple of days at CES 2010 in Vegas and I wish I had more
time to wander the show floor. Here are my two favorite devices, the N900
and Nexus One.

Welcome to the show floor

palmsolo — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:43:28 +0000

Welcome to the show floor,
originally uploaded by palmsolo.

Day one of the actual show floor opened up early for me with a press event
at 7:30 am.

Traveled to Vegas for CES

palmsolo — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 03:54:37 +0000

Traveled to Vegas for CES,
originally uploaded by palmsolo.

I am staying at the Mirage this tear and it is very nice. Much better
than the scary Casino Royale I stayed in before.

XP on my Fujitsu U810 is a breath of fresh air

palmsolo — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 21:32:23 +0000

The Fujitsu U810 UMPC device I purchased a few weeks ago came preloaded with Windows Vista Business and I lived with it for a couple of weeks because I really wanted to give Vista a chance on a dedicated device. However, the U810 specs are quite minimal for Vista (1GB of soldered RAM and an 800 MHz processor) and it was working hard to keep up. I thought I would use the U810 (named Ubacca) for minimal on the go purposes, but even with these practices it still hung up a bit when switching applications and wasn’t very snappy. The nail in the coffin happened yesterday when I tried connecting the Advantage to Ubacca to install an application and it wouldn’t recognize the USB port. I then reformatted the hard drive and installed Windows XP Tablet Edition (the DVD came with the U810 I bought from Fujitsu).

I loaded up my 15+ applications (PocketBible, SlingPlayer, Nokia PC Suite, Office, etc) last night and XP seems to fly on this portable device. So far I am much happier with XP and while Vista looked great, it seems to focus more on multimedia and transitions rather than on working efficiently. I’ll give XP a try for a while and see if this is what I stick too. I wish I could upgrade to 2GB of RAM as that may help, but I knew the limitation going into this purchase so will make it work as best as I can.

Back from Barcelona, lots of great wireless devices and services

palmsolo — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 15:36:36 +0000

I am now back home and spent all weekend hanging with my family after being gone for a week. If you haven’t checked out my many posts from the Mobile World Congress then you may want to head on over to my ZDNet blog and check some of them out. I had a chance to get my hands on a Google Android device, XPERIA X1, Nokia N96, the Readius eInk device and a ton of other devices. I also enjoyed seeing Share on Ovi, Opera Mobile 9.5, and other mobile services and applications.

That should be it for my mobile related trips this year as I have already burned half of my vacation time for CES and MWC.

Arrived in Barcelona, thanks Nokia

palmsolo — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 05:37:46 +0000

I had a very long 2 days getting here to Barcelona, but I arrived safely. I was blessed to be invited on this trip by Nokia and will/be spending the first 2 days with Nokia folks. They gave each of us (there are about 8 of us) a Nokia N810 to try out and I am making this post on it using the thumb keyboard. We had a nice dinner nwith a couple Nokia guys too and then went to bed.

I was up very early/late writing about all the latest Windows Mobile news coming out at MWC so check out my ZDNet blog for that coverage. Much more to come today.

palmsolo’s still here and summary of mobile happenings

palmsolo — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 15:49:32 +0000

Wow, I have been quite remiss in posting updates to this personal blog of mine and for those who are still actually reading it I apologize. I have been very busy with my yard (the grass is now about an inch in length and looking good – Flickr photos coming soon), coaching soccer (we only lost 1 game all season so far), watching soccer (my 2 oldest play for great teams too), spending time with my family, and blogging for ZDNet. I’ll try to update this a bit more regularly, but will give you a summary update below:

BlackBerry device in the house: Yes, it is true. I was sent a review T-Mobile BlackBerry Curve and this was really the first BlackBerry I spent any significant amount of time with. I really enjoy using it and plan to pick one up for myself soon, maybe even with the excellent @Home UMA/WiFi service that can reduce my monthly minute usage. I am amazed by how many 3rd party applications work with the device and find it to be very consumer focused now with the camera and media player. I posted a review on ZDNet and have very little to say about any dislikes with the device. I even found that Laridian has a Bible for the BlackBerry so I am very satisfied with the device!
iPhone still here too: I do still have my iPhone and AT&T account, but am probably going to be ending my AT&T contract soon by paying the early termination fee. I don’t need to be shelling out $70/month for a bit faster data than I see on T-Mobile, especially given the fact that I probably won’t be traveling as much in the future with much of our salvage work stopping soon (a change in our strategic plan at work). I still have my iPhone with the 1.0.2 firmware and find it to be a very nice device, but do miss all the 3rd party stuff available for Windows Mobile and BlackBerry.

HTC Advantage being used on the Sounder: HTC is still letting me evaluate the HTC Advantage as I conduct some software reviews (SoftMaker Office Suite, etc) and I have been using it primarily via WiFi on the Sounder commuter trains to and from work. I still may pick one of these up for myself for Christmas, but we’ll see what comes down the pipe soon.

New T-Mobile Shadow: T-Mobile just announced the HTC Shadow last night and it looks like a wonderful Windows Mobile Smartphone. My wife took my Dash and really likes the Smartphone platform, but she may like the Shadow even better with its larger display and cool slide-up display that reveals the phone keypad. She hates the volume JOGR on the Dash and at only $150, the Shadow looks like a great deal.

What about Nokia and S60?: I keep falling back to the excellent Nokia N95 for high quality phone functionality and 3rd party apps, but have no plans for upgrading any time soon. I thought of the N95-8GB, but with the new SanDisk 8GB microSD cards I think that is a better option. The N95-3G version looks good, but only works with AT&T in the U.S. The N81 looked good, until I read some reviews that weren’t that positive. It will be tough to top the N95, but I do really look forward to what Nokia will bring in 2008 with the new touch UI.

Thoughts on the Palm Centro: I am just about done with my review of the Palm Centro and have to say I think this is the BEST Palm OS device I have seen in a few years. When a GSM version is released I will most likely be picking one up for my Palm OS device (currently I only have older Palm devices in house). It is sleak, full featured, and priced right at $99.

MacBook Pro now running Leopard: My 160GB MBP drive crashed on me a couple weeks ago and I lost about 2 months of photos. It was still under warranty and a new drive arrived on Friday, along with my copy of Leopard. I made a clean install of Leopard on the replacement drive and now will be regularly backing up my data using the new Time Machine feature. I have no plans to upgrade my laptop any time soon and with my mobile device collection I don’t plan to get a UMPC either right now (as much as I would love to have an OQO Model 02 or something like that).

Upcoming travel plans: I will be flying into Amsterdam in November for a few days and then will be hitting the streets of Vegas for CES in January for 3 days. I am almost to MVP Gold status and may even have a trip or two to Alaska and one to Miami before the end of the year.

How To: Login to T-Mobile Hotspot when you are T-Mobile data customer

palmsolo — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 20:56:20 +0000

I was forced to upgrade to the full US$30/month unlimited data plan on T-Mobile that includes the T-Mobile Hotspot access. The problem was that I could not figure out how in the world to login to Hotspots because I needed a username and password that I was never sent by T-Mobile and had no clue how to get. I tried my My T-Mobile login and password that I use to manage my account at T-Mobile, but that didn’t work. I then Googled like a mad man and finally found the simple answer.

If you have the unlimited data plan here is what you need to login initially (I recommend changing your password after your initial login):

username: your 10 digit mobile phone number
password: last 4 digits of your social security number

That’s all you need to get into your account and update it with a new password.

I thought I liked the Palm Foleo

palmsolo — Thu, 31 May 2007 14:50:29 +0000

Palm announced their Foleo mobile companion device yesterday and most every blogger I read over the last 24 hours does not like the device. I actually am thinking about it as a possible future purchase since I think it takes the Nokia Internet Tablet idea and makes it better with a larger display and a keyboard. With the integrated WiFi you don’t even need a smartphone to use the device, but the multimedia functionality is still an unknown. I think if it was priced the same as the N800 (US$399) it would probably sell quite well, but with a full retail price of US$600 then that may push it too far out of people’s comfortable price range.

I take my Stowaway BT keyboard with me and try to use the TV-out on S60 devices, but many times hotel do not have the ports available to turn the mobile device into a traveling computer and the Foleo would allow you to always have a display and keyboard with you. I think the device may be a good companion for the business traveler who needs to get some basic work done on the plane and needs a device that lasts longer than the 2-3 hour battery life on most all laptops. Granted, there are micro laptops out there with long battery life and good performance, but they cost 3 to 4 times what the Foleo will cost you.

I need to get a hold of one and see for myself. What do you think of the Palm Foleo?

UPDATE: After some more thinking about the device, I just don’t think there is a need for the Foleo as I stated in my ZDNet blog entry.

Back home for now and winning ball games

palmsolo — Thu, 31 May 2007 14:44:48 +0000

I just returned from a very relaxing vacation in Los Cabos thanks to my wife’s hard work and Party Lite. You gotta love that company!

I hope to not travel in June and instead spend time coaching my softball team, finishing my yard, and camping with my family. My coach pitch softball team is doing well this year and we are in 3rd place and working hard to get into the top 2 for that end-of-year trophy. The girls have come a long ways since last year and it is fun to coach and watch them develop into little ball players.