Alsop's Small Thoughts

Cellular Perfection?

I am NOT paying Sheraton (Starwood) $9.95 a day for getting connected to the Internet right now. (Interestingly, they don't tell you how much you have to pay until you actually get to the page where you have to say you want to be connected. Perhaps they won't want to admit what it costs. More likely they don't want to print the cost or hardwire it anywhere, since they know the price ultimately won't hold.)

I am connected to the Internet through Sprint Mobile Broadband, colloquially known as EV-DO. Verizon also offers this service, but Cingular and T-Mobile can't because they have a different technology in their networks (a not-so-standard version of GSM, touted as a worldwide standard) that doesn't allow their cards to go fast enough to be called "broadband". I was also connected to the service in the backseat of my taxi from JFK airport into Manhattan, before arriving at the Sheraton New York. (The service wasn't great in the taxi since it doesn't work well in tunnels, in depressed roadways or when the taxi is going 80 miles an hour, which my driver was going when the traffic didn't slow him down.) I could go into Central Park and also be connected. (I might do that since the weather is a whole lot better here than in San Francisco.) As well as in any coffee store I choose, regardless of whether it is Starbucks (T-Mobile Hotspots), Peets (no WiFi of any kind), or any other coffee store (more likely Boingo). I can use the service in most major and a lot of minor cities.

I pay $60 a month to Sprint for the service attached to this card. And it has changed my use of my computer forever. It's not perfect as in the backseat of a New York taxi or in cities that don't have EV-DO infrastructure. But it provides the kind of ubiquity that might (almost) change your mind about the cellular network operators. And it makes you feel good to be an American cellular user, because GSM networks can't handle this kind of data speeds. So we've got something the French don't! N'est ce pas?

And the $60 a month doesn't seem so bad, if you really switch over from WiFi: If I stay five days a month in hotels that charge $10 a day, that's $50 a month. (Some hotels, ironically the less expensive hotels, give WiFi for free; some hotels, ironically the expensive luxury ones, charge more than $10 a day.) If I subscribe to one monthly subscription for WiFi access (T-Mobile, Wayport or Boingo are between $20-30 a month), that's another $25. And if I buy one-day access three times a month in places where I don't have a subscription and that aren't a hotel, that will be another $20-30 a month. So you can pay Sprint or Verizon $60 a month or you can pay $70-100 a month to somewhere between three and five vendors.

It's not the end of WiFi, but it is transformational.

No Internet at BestBuy

So I returned the TiVo I just bought this morning. No phone line, so I thought the easiest way to solve this problem is to take it back to BestBuy and swap it for one that doesn't need a phone line to get started. BestBuy doesn't have any of those, so I just returned it for a refund. But here's a little tidbit; I asked the returns/exchange guy if I could use a computer to look up TiVo's tip for how to tell if a particular box has the right software (ie version 7.2) to set itself up without a phone line. He told me that it's company policy not to let any computers surf outside the intranet in the store. In other words, BestBuy is a computer store with hundreds of computers hooked up to a network and you can't surf the internet! Intentionally.

Not So Hard Disks

The thought has just struck me: The hard disks in three of the four computers I have the pleasure of dealing with failed in the last year. My Macintosh Powerbook G4, just a year old now, lost its hard disk last summer. My son's Dell Inspiron 6000 lost its hard disk last fall. And my brand-new Lenovo Thinkpad Z60t apparently came with a faulty hard disk. However, in every case, the disks failed slowly, allowing me or someone else to back up the disks before they were replaced.

The tiny little Dell Latitude that my old firm provided me has been chugging away for more than two years with no problems (yet). My TiVos generally have gone along pretty well, although I think I got the green screen of death on the Samsung because the hard disk decrepidated. My iPods have generally been reliable, although the New York Times' Joe Nocera had something to say about that (registration required) yesterday.

This experience has lead me to believe that hard disks are a problem and computers are not to be trusted. I wonder if that means something about the hard disk industry.

I want a computer that works

I just want to express my deep disappointment that I can't get a working computer. I paid moola for a really fancy computer and it hasn't worked right in the nearly three weeks I've had it. The problem isn't the hardware. It's service (Verizon). It's software (Microsoft, IBM Lenovo, Verizon). It really feels like all the excitement and promise of personal computer -- a computer at the disposal of everyman -- has been lost. I might just be grumpy, but I'm also really pissed off at how bad it is.

Free wireless means no support?

I'm sitting in my car near the intersection of University Avenue and Tasso Street in Palo Alto. I'm connected to SSID "PublicWiFi", which I think is the WiFi service provided by the city of Palo Alto. It works really well, 54mbps and no annoying registration forms. That compares to the one I choose first, SSID "AnchorFree", which is really slow (11mbps) and does involve an annoying registration form. It's so annoying that it requires you to fill out every field on the form, including phone number and age and profession. If you don't get every field, you have to start over. And then when I got it right, it failed to confirm and wouldn't let me sign in. So I never got that free access. Most annoying: While I was waiting for some kind of response, I noticed this title for the page: "NEW MEMEBERS SIGN UP". They can't even spell. What incredibly stupid business person offers a free service that doesn't work in competition with a public service that seems to work really well? This one, in case you are really wondering.

Typepad's moving (not so) fast

I sent the post below in by email at 9:45am this morning. It finally posted "successfully" at 5:25pm. This is my technology life today. My cell service (Sprint) actually had an outage for about an hour this afternoon. (That's never happened to me!) My car's right front tire has a nail in it. My Exchange server won't authenticate Outlook. (So I'm stuck using my Treo and Outlook Web Access to do email.) Verizon doesn't have an EV-DO signal in The Presidio. Jeez!

I finally signed up with Comcast today to replace DirecTV and I have both the internet and TV techs coming during the 12-4pm period tomorrow. If I'm lucky, I'll get to introduce them to each other and see if they can avoid screwing up the other service, since they both come over the same wire!

Why Windows Isn't Easy

My computer goes off on its own from time to time. I think it might be Outlook. But it could be Zinio Reader. Or it could be Plaxo. I've suspected virtually every add-on or program I use regularly. But I can't tell and don't know how to tell and don't even really know why the heck I should have to tell what's causing problems, much less having to fix the problems myself. I launched into an attempt to figure out after restarting my computer once again to get things going. And here's a discussion I found that just makes me tired. I actually ran this program called MSCONFIG and it has much information about what's running on my computer, but doesn't tell me anything. So what do I turn off without hurting the computer in order to make it work better. If anybody can help, please do!

Technically Peckish

It's been a really bad week for me, technology-wise. So I'm feeling peckish about computers and stuff. (Peckish is one of my favorite words; my girlfriend and I tend to use it to describe how we act when we haven't eaten for too long.) Anyway, here's the laundry list:

My Samsung DirecTiVo died. At the same time, DirecTV cut me off because I was 30 days later paying my bill. (Isn't that a nice way to treat one of your best customers, who has been paying the bill regularly for years and recently averaging between $95 and $120 a month, depending on how many pay-per-view movies my son ordered?) So I paid the bill and replaced the Samsung receiver with the Hughes receiver that I wasn't using. And now I have the dreaded Green Screen, which says:

"A severe error has occurred.

Please leave the Receiver plugged in and connected to the phone line for the next three hours while the Receiver attempts to repair itself.

DO NOT UNPLUG OR RESTART THE RECEIVER."

That's the worst of my bad week. I also upgraded my Treo 650 from software version 1.03 to version 1.12. I thought it might take 30 minutes. I followed the instructions precisely, but I still screwed it up and got a white screen. (Do the vendors choose the color of the death screen intentionally? Blue for Microsoft; Green for TiVo; White for Treo?) It took three hours instead, during which time I couldn't use the device as a phone and also during which time I had to call Sprint to get advice about how to unwind my screw-up. The technician who helped was actually helpful and spent some time waxing eloquent about his friend in the electronics business thought that things worked better as separate components and that the industry was making everything harder and more complex by trying to cram everything into little devices (like the very Treo I was trying to upgrade).

And then there's the fact that CDW can't get my brand-new IBM (Lenovo) Thinkpad Z60t from the factory so they can deliver it to me. IBM is behind on making the things. I know I'm supposed to be skeptical, but this computer has EV-DO built in which will mean that I have pretty darn close to wireless broadband connectivity available pretty much anywhere I'm likely to go (except maybe Santa Fe, NM). I really want this computer and I've been waiting for two weeks to get it.

As I say, I'm getting pretty peckish about the goddamned technology industry!

What's up with Wired Magazine Online?

I read an article in Wired magazine and wanted to send the URL to a friend. So I type in www.wired.com and am routed to Wired News, which I didn't want. What I wanted was the article "My Bionic Quest for Bolero", about the author's efforts to reprogram his cochlear implant to hear music, specifically Bolero. It was published in the November issue of Wired. So I typed "cochlear" in the search box, which claims proudly that it is powered by Lycos, and asked it to search Wired magazine. I got 41 search results, not one of which was the relevant article. Indeed, the last article it showed was from 2003, as though it hadn't even indiexed the last few years. Then I typed in "Bolero" since it is in the headline and it said there were no results at all. Then I typed in "Reprogramming the Inner Ear" and also got no results. So I clicked on the link to the current, December issue of the magazine, shown on the left side (don't click on the mini-cover or you'll be sent to a subscription page!). Then I get to browse the November issue by clicking on its link. And the Bolero article is the third article listed in the issue.

But, when I try to email the article, the emailer app tells me I haven't included the URL even though it is displayed and in a very Web 1.0 fashion refreshes the whole page so I lose the text I've typed in my email. So I end up copying the URL from the article into my email program and writing the email there.

The search is broken. The emailer app is broken. The site is designed to sell subscriptions rather than work with the magazine's editorial. And this from the magazine that asks in its current issue: "Who's afraid of Google?"

Great Error Messages: Windows Media 10

I upgraded to Windows Media 10 last night, at the suggestion of Windows. I don't even want to tell you how ugly it was replacing so much software on my computer and then restarting it. But best -- particularly for older folks like myself, who remember what Napster really stood for when it was started -- was the message I got when I tried to play a track that WM10 found after it surveyed my hard disk:

"The track you are trying to play is a Napster track. Click here to install Napster. After you install Napster, close this window before playing tracks."

Napster with DRM!