What Was She Thinking?!

Remember, if your computer freezes up, here is some valuable advice.

I just seem to be collecting gadgets like my black wool skirt collects cat hair these days. I recently upgraded my cellphone to a Motorola Slvr L7c, one of the few "candybar" style phones Verizon offers anymore. (Why in God's name does everyone want a flip phone?) I'd always lusted after the Palm Treo series, hoping that it would replace the Sony Clie TJ37 PDA that I'd been carrying around for years to surf the net, read e-books and play MP3s. But I could never justify the steep price of the Treos (even with my Verizon $100 discount).

So I had settled, this past October, for the Motorola Slvr. (I had always pronounced this "silver" because my Moto was silver in color; but I found from viewing a cNet video review of this phone that it is indeed prounounced "sliver.") I never liked that damn thing from jump street. First of all, you can't use any old headset without a special adapter. And the adapter is the same portal for the charger. So I got a bluetooth headset. But .. gotcha .. you can't use the phone while it's charging. So there would be no fighting over the same hole in the phone. Gah. It got worse from there. It was just hard to use, it didn't fit my hand well, I caught it sneaking onto the internet a few times. Nightmarish.

The Slvr does have one, and only one, drop dead wonderful feature that I have not seen on any phone I've ever had, but which IMHO should be mandatory on every cell phone. That is that the phone talks when you are dialing a number, so you have verbal confirmation that you pressed the intended keys.

I bit the bullet and got a very nice used Treo 700P, Verizon-ready, off e-Bay for way less than $200. Within half an hour after ripping the box open, I had it activated and up and running. I just got back from the Verizon store where I had them convert all my contact info from the Slvr to the Treo. I've already synced it with my Palm Desktop and installed some of my favorite Palm apps (Bejeweled, Mummy Maze, ICQ [watch out, Ivan], Moblog, Adobe Reader, Aero Player and List Maker) and some e-Books!

I've tried texting a few friends but I haven't heard back from them to see if my message actually made it through or not. One thing I already don't like about this Treo (yeah, I'm a picky little shit, aren't I?) is that with the Clie (also running Palm OS 5), you could actually tap an icon for every application and bring up a menu for that application and you could also close that application the same way. If you can do this with the Treo, I haven't figured out how, so I end up turning it off and back on again. Also, unlike my Clie, there is no handwriting application or onscreen keyboard (the Nokia has this as well, and it pops up intuitively whenever data entry is required), just the chiclet keys on the front of the phone. So that will take some getting used to.

Something I like (because my eyesight is so bad) is that you can either use the chiclet keys to dial a telephone number (why?) or you can use the big fat onscreen keypad (yayness). There is no audible confirmation as there was with the Slvr, but the keys are big enough that I haven't had to wonder whether I hit the right key or not.

I mean, I've only had this phone for less than 24 hours, and even though there are some things I think it could do better (and I'm constantly comparing it to my other beloved gadgets such as the Clie and the Nokia), I think I finally found a phone I can live with. At least until it's time to upgrade again, October 2009!

Now, I've got three gizmos in my purse that are capable of going online (the Clie, my Nokia Internet Tablet and now this Treo, although the Nokia has the best, brightest screen). All three play music (the Nokia being the less desirable music player), and all three have IM capabilities (although only the Clie and the Treo use native ICQ; the Nokia can only use IMs other than GoogleTalk and Skype via a web-based service such as KoolIM or Meebo). I think I have enough, don't you?

And by the way, I'm selling my barely two-month old Verizon-ready Motorola Slvr for $30 plus $5 shipping and that includes the 1GB mini-SD card, a custom Verizon carry case with belt clip, a car charger and adapter. PM me if you are interested and live in the Continental U.S.

I let my birthday slip by without telling you about my new toy! Bad girl! It's this thing here:

I thought long and hard about this for about a week before finally purchasing it. After all, I already have a cell phone and PDA, so did I really need another gadget riding around in my handbag? Apparently so. It's NOT a PDA replacement, make no mistake about that. And there are still a few things my PDA has/does better than this 770. But for internet surfing and chatting via GoogleTalk .. I'm lovin it. Like my PDA, it's handy to have while sitting around waiting for your car to be worked on or at the doctor's office, or anywhere else you need to pass the time. As long as you have access to Wi-Fi or Bluetooth via a cellular phone, you're connected. But even if not, there are a couple of games that will help pass the time and it can read PDF files. No camera on this one; the camera came later with the advent of the replacement: Nokia's 800. The onboard memory is rather puny, but you can supplement that with an RS-MMC card up to 1GB. You can use that for virtual memory and to stash music and PDF files. While the 770 can play your MP3 files, it's no i-Pod, and it's forte is streaming Internet radio. Still, for the money ($129 after a $10 Google Checkout discount via Buy.com), it's a really great bargain. More photos in the Photo Album.

There's apparently a new and groovy computer system in place at the Houston Municipal Court. But something went horribly, horribly wrong. What? Human nature intervened. Take people who have been doing something a certain way for 18 years and throw new technology at them and watch the devastation. It's not pretty.

City officials said Monday's performance of the computer system was better than a trial run in January. They said it could take between 30 and 90 days for the system to be at full speed.

Which begs the question, why deploy it now, then? Train them behind the scenes and roll it out in 30-90 days when all users are trained. Am I missing something here?

Microsoft to introduce a search engine better than Google? I shit you not. That's what they claim!