Could big business finally be starting to see the light? Sure the heck looks like it. Great article with plenty of ammo to take into your executive team meetings...
Macs remain strong players in graphics and digital-media production markets. And now they're becoming a factor for everyday server chores inside the data center.
Long time Apple reseller Mac Center, in south FL, has closed it's doors effective Feb. 28, 2005. It is a sad moment to see such an icon in the Mac community close up shop. I have some buddies that are now going to be hitting the streets looking for work in an already tough job market. Good luck to all of you and stay strong, keep the faith. Many good things are yet to come.
Well folks, if you haven't grabbed your Treo 650 by now, you may just have to wait a wee bit longer. Seems like Cingular has pulled the Treo 650 from it's website. I can only speculate that it is a direct result of the boat load of problems people are having with the firmware and SIM cards that have been shipping with the unit. That is just lovely I tell ya. Hopefully the new and improved version will come back soon...
Cobb County appears to be one of a number of growing school districts in the country who are starting to get it. This isn't about Mac vs. PC, this is about the kids and providing them the best tools possible for their EDUCATION. Once the parents and politicians figure this out, we will start seeing more progress in the schools. The difference here is that Apple knows education better than ANYONE in the industry, their resources in education are incredible, and Apple has some of the brightest and most talented people I have ever met. Unlike some other vendors, the Apple folks genuinely care about the education process. They are passionate and it shows. Parents and administrators who may be reading this...if you want to make a difference in your childs future, contact your local Apple Education team and set up a discovery meeting. Let them show you the way that education SHOULD be and how the future is all about the Digital Classroom.
Thanks to MacNN for the write-up...
Cobb County community discusses iBook initiative:
More than 250 parents, students, teachers and taxpayers met Wednesday night in east Cobb County to learn more about a plan to give Apple iBooks to 63,000 students and teachers. Three Cobb County school board members and Apple representatives were on hand for the first of four community meetings, designed to educate the public and answer their questions about the laptop computer program. The majority of the comments at the meeting were from people in favor of the initiative, which would provide laptops to teachers and middle and high school students. Cobb officials expect the cost after the first four years to be about $20 million a year if it continues to lease 63,000 laptops at once. Apple also will provide an around-the-clock help desk as well as 100 computer servers to the district.
Here's a big heads up for all you Treonauts. There seems to be a documented bug in the Cingular database concerning some wacky SIM cards. MY phone (as well as another buddy's Treo) seems to have a problem when answering incoming calls. On several occasions, my Treo 650 has frozen when picking up an incoming call. There has been no way to un-freeze the phone other than to do a soft-reset. In some cases, it will reboot the Treo automatically. I haven't had this problem but 2-3 times, but my buddy hasn't been so lucky. His phone was rendered practically unusable as a result of this glitch. The problem seems to lie within a certain batch of SIM cards. The SIM cards in question have a series of numbers on the smart-chip side that end in the letter "G". If you have one of these SIM cards and are experiencing these problems, call Cingular Tech Support or stop by your local Cingular Super Store. They will swap out the SIM for the newer "Super SIM" which appears to cure the problem. Gotta love bleeding edge baby....
Can't post about the apps and not mention the accessories. I have done my homework and looked at a lot of goodies. Here is what I have deemed a kick-ass buy:
Cases:
This was a tough one. There are loads of nice cases. My top 3 are:
1] Sena Cases: Beautiful Cases and very well made. There were others that looked similar, such as the Piel Frama cases, but the Sena Case was more functional. It allows you to use the camera and get to other essential ports on the Treo 650 fairly easily. I personally chose this case with the magnetic flip cover (pictured above). So far the only annoying thing is the flap opening up too easily, but considering the protection it gives the screen and device, it is a minor inconvenience. The other advantage to the magnetic flipper is that it allows you to carry 2 additional SD cards for the Treo. With the amount of stuff you can do on the Treo, you WILL be buying additional SD cards and now you have a place to stuff them.
2] Vaja iVolution: These cases look pretty insane. I haven't been able to see one in person, but if the price tag is any indication, they will be certain to please. I love the customizable nature of the cases. I would have probably picked this for myself, but at these prices, it is out of the range of most people with any common sense or a budget. For those of you that are fortunate enough to afford it, this looks to be a winner.
Headsets:
This was a tough one. Lots of headsets out there, but the one that seemed to get the most positive feedback was the Motorola HS810. So far the best bang for the buck. The headset has been solid, great clarity and excellent battery life. My Treo battery gives out WAY before the headset does. Best price on this beast has been through Amazon. Click the link and it will take you straight to the page.
Cradle:
So far the only decent cradle kit I have seen is the one from Palm One. The problem is that they haven't released it! Kudos on Palm one integrating a 2nd slot for the battery so that you can charge the phone AND a 2nd battery at the same time. With this phone, you are gonna need it! Click the link above for instant access to Amazon's page. Availability should be sometime in March.
One of the things to watch out for when using the latest Treo 650 is the apps you install on the device. Not all apps will yield positive results. I can't stress enough how installing the wrong app will have catastrophic effects on your device. I am to the point of not installing ANYTHING unless I read somewhere that it has been fully tested and works on the Treo 650. Of course, there ARE apps that will work and aren't going to blow your Treo up, but be careful. As I mentioned earlier, BACK UP. Another best practice to keep in mind is to install apps ONE AT A TIME. If you encounter some goofy stuff as a result of a new app, at least you know where you went wrong and it will make troubleshooting a whole lot easier. I have compiled a list of what I consider some essential apps that will make the most out of your Treo. All of these will definitely work on your Treo with no adverse effects. And the nominees are....
1] mVoice: Very cool little app that adds voice capture capabilities to your Treo. Great for Podcasts!
2] mRing: Great app if you dig MP3 ringtones and want to use them on your Treo.
3] mSafe: Essential if you are concerned about your data getting into the wrong hands.
4] mLights: The Treo 650 is a battery HOG. This will help ease the pain.
5] mNews: If you are into blogs or news, you will want this app!
6] MMPlayer: Killer video app for watching those DiVX movies on your Treo.
7] SplashPhoto: Awesome photo management.
8] Pocket Tunes: Great media player and required to run mRing.
9] Chatopus: Nifty Jabber client that allows you to connect to AIM, MSN, Yahoo for free.
10] VeriChat: Another IM client that so far seems to be the leader of the pack, yearly fee is a bummer though.
11] Softick Card Export: This one makes getting to that data on the SD card a snap.
12] Salling Clicker: If you are on a Mac, don't be caught dead without this app.
13] Palm VNC: Network geeks, you know who you are. Gotta have this to remote control that server!
14] VeriSafe: You know how important backing up is. This app makes it easy and gives you way more options.
That pretty much wraps it up for the time being. As I find more essential apps, I will update the list. For now, these pretty much rock. If you know of any other apps that I missed, leave a comment! Peace out...
If you have been following my postings, by now you probably are familiar with my struggles in switching over to Cingular and getting the Treo 650. I have had my Treo 650 for a little over a week, and I have some pretty positive things to report.
The switch has definitely been worth it. The service and coverage on the Cingular side have been pretty solid. I have had very few (if any) dropped calls since my switch. The Edge data services are blazing fast for a phone. Still not exactly DSL speeds, but more than adequate for the type of stuff you would pull up over a small browser interface like on a smartphone.
The ride has been good so far, but not entirely without a few glitches. Let me start by making a very strong recommendation: BACK UP YOUR DATA. BACK UP YOUR DATA. BACK UP YOUR DATA. BACK UP YOUR DATA. BACK UP YOUR DATA. BACK UP YOUR DATA. BACK UP YOUR DATA.
Did I get my point across? Yeah, there are definitely a few bugs still looming around in the firmware. Here is a valuable tip for you Palm / Treo Newbies. When you Hotsync, a backup of your configuration is created automatically. This is good, but it is also very bad. The Treo is a Palm device, but not exactly compatible with all Palm apps. If you happen to install a rogue app that throws your phone into the reboot loop from hell, you are toast. My advice is to get your phone loaded up into a virgin state and synced up with your data and most essential (and Treo 650 Certified) apps. Make sure to set up all your preferences and settings just the way you like them. Once you have completed this step, go ahead and sync up. Now go into your Palm folder and create an archive (zip file) of that user folder. Once you have completed this step, if you ever come across a problem, you can restore your phone to a state you know is stable (by overwriting the user folder with your archived copy), and won't have to reconfigure the phone from scratch. Upon doing a hard reset and wiping out the Treo, on your next sync, it will restore it based on that archived info.
More useful tips and tricks to come...
Every so often comes along a person who deserves some special recognition and a big thank you. One such person is Michael Pike, creator of the X-SYS series of applications. Not only are these apps functional and look great, they are 100% FREE. This show the kind of passion and dedication that I wish everyone in this line of work had. This is proof that there are still people out there who are not all about the money, and do what they do for the pure love of it. I haven't had a chance to play with the apps yet, but I do plan to evaluate them and post my results at a later date. Thanks Mike for a job well done and contributing to the cause...
FINALLY! My Cingular Treo 650 has arrived, and with the proper SIM card and Phone!!! Man, what a mission to get a phone and xfer service. I unpacked the phone this afternoon and set it to charge for the next few hours. After work I finally had a little time to start playing with it. I started by getting the phone activated. Everything went pretty smooth, minus the computer problems the girl on the other side was having. Total time activating and going through the checklists was about 30 minutes.
I totally made out like a bandit. All things considered, the amount of time spent was worth it. To make a long story short without going into too many details, I was able to get the phone for UNDER $300 INCLUDING TAX. Mind you, that this does NOT include a $60 credit, a waived setup fee, and another $50 rebate coming my way. So if you add it all up, I paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $150 for everything! And here is another bonus. Looks like Cingular just changed their pricing and plans today. I had chosen to go on a Nationwide 850 plan, and as of today, that plan is now 900 minutes. But they did make one MAJOR change. I had opted for the MediaWorks plan which included unlimited data over WAP. Guess what? As of today, that MediaWorks plan only covers 3MB of data! Total BS. If you want the unlimited data, now u gotta throw in another $5. I was able to convince the girl to grandfather me into the prior plan with the unlimited MediaWorks.
So all-in-all I am pleased so far in the first few hours with the phone. I am still trying to set up all the services and get my Mac synced up and data transfered, but I am sure I will get to that later tonight. For now, I am a pretty happy camper. I will continue to make updates on the transition as interesting tid bits arise. Stay tuned....
So here's a quick update on my pursuit of a Treo 650. Upon arriving at my house yesterday, there was yet another box from Fedex. Sure enough, a Treo 650. So as it turns out, it is Treo 650 #2 that was shipped incorrectly as an AT&T phone, not Cingular. Has anyone else on the planet had to go through this much trouble to give a company their business?!?! So far total time spent on this is 6.5 hours. Let's see if order #3 gets shipped correctly.
Here's a little horror story about my switching carriers from AT&T to Cingular for you. So as many of you know, last Friday I ordered my Treo 650 and decided to switch my service from AT&T to Cingular. For all intents and purposes, you would think this would be a fairly straight forward process. Well guess again. On Friday it took me 1.5 hours on the phone with my AT&T Business rep to get a simple order processed. Although AT&T and Cingular have merged their networks, apparently you need to pick one or the other because if you choose to stay with AT&T, that phone will be locked to the AT&T Network, and won't work on Cingular. Yeah, you heard me. What the hell is that all about? And if you want to get an unlocked phone from PalmOne direct, you can do so for a cool $699. Look man, the phone kicks ass, but not $700 worth of ass.
So after crunching some numbers, the Cingular plan was by far a better choice than anything AT&T had in their list of plans. The real kicker was the Media Works data plan for $19.99 a month. It basically gives you unlimited data on the Treo so you won't get killed when downloading all that email and surfing the WAP sites on that snappy new Edge network. As of the moment, it is the best deal going from all carriers from when taking speed and features into consideration. Keep in mind this is not the same thing as their Data plans which will let you use the phone as a modem to connect to the internet. The phone (after rebate) comes to $399. Now the interesting part will be to see if I can scam the 45% discount on the phone after I get it. More on that in a minute...
So fast forward to Monday. I call AT&T to get status on the order. All of a sudden, the order can't be found in the system. The nice girl looked and looked, but nada. So she started a new order and we went through the whole schpeal again. Another hour wasted answering questions all over again. This time she GUARANTEED me it was in the system. So I get order conf. #2. All looks good in Treo-land.
So today I get home and low and behold, there is my new Treo 650! I was like a kid at Xmas. Then I opened the box, only to find that the phone was packed with an AT&T SIM Card and issued a new phone # instead of porting my old #. Now I don't understand what the heck went wrong here. My sales rep was VERY clear that I wanted to switch over to Cingular, but somehow my order was processed completely different than was intended. So I call AT&T again, and find out that the order that arrived today was the original order from FRIDAY. WTF! Ok, now I am getting pissed. We pull up the order from Monday, and that is in the system, but hasn't shipped. And to make matters worse, the 2nd order was also configured the same as the first, and it would have shipped with an AT&T phone/SIM!!! Blood pressure was starting to cook, lemme tell ya.
OK. So now I am looking at this phone, all giddy and ready to activate it, but something was feeling very wrong in my gut. I had the rep check a few things for me and sure enough, the SIM card was indeed registered under the AT&T network, and you guessed it, the Treo 650 was also an AT&T phone with their ROM. Guess what? I was FSCKED. Now mind you, this is AFTER I had already been on the phone with this lady for 45 minutes getting the billing figured out because I was supposed to be charged $449 and got billed almost $600!!! Forget about the fact that because I am under a business contract, I get 45% off on new phone upgrades (which later I found out that it conveniently doesn't cover data devices such as the Treo). So after an hour on the phone with her, I get this lady to issue me a credit for the 45% and the total price of the phone was now $301. I was happy, until I found out the phone was useless.
Fast forward to yet another rep. By now I have been trying to order this phone for over 5 hours between Friday and today. So they xfer me to yet another rep, this time, someone who pulled out the big guns. This kid knew what he was doing (or so it seems so far). He told me about how they just changed the order form AGAIN and things have changed. Mind you folks, this damn phone hasn't been on the market a week and the order process has changed a couple times already. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing and ALL AT&T to Cingular conversions are being done MANUALLY by a HUMAN!!!!!!! All the crap that the AT&T reps are filling out, has to be processed by a person, instead of it being automated into their systems.
So I finally get my order squared away with this kid, but I end up hosed again. He breaks the news about how I can't get my 45% discount on the phone. He was nice enough to give me a $60 credit. So now I will submit the rebate (form is online) as well and see if I can scam another $50 as advertised. He also gave me a $16 credit for get this.....Cingular charges a fee for transferring AT&T customer to Cingular! WTF!!!! Now I have heard of some stupid crap, but this takes the cake. They want all the AT&T folks to renew their plans and convert to Cingualr (no doubt to get them on 1 damn provisioning / billing system), but they wanna charge the customer to do it? Man, corporate America needs to wake the hell up and get a friggin reality check.
So here I am, staring at a nice new shiny Treo 650 that is completely teasing me and screaming a big FU at me. That just aint right. Let's see how long it will take to get the new one and if they get the order right this time. So far, total time wasted on this is 6 hours. Lets see....6 hours billed at my hourly rate of $125, looks like Cingular should be paying ME to switch damnit!!!!
Can I have a diet coke and some fries to go with this? :-)
Quarter Pounder Mac mini Cluster (now with cheese):
After the great worldwide success of Virginia Tech's Big Mac , a new Macintosh cluster has taken everybody in the Mac community by storm. The Quarter Pounder Mac mini Cluster is turning heads in the low-performance computing world because it has been built for just over $2,000, from off-the-shelf Mac mini, in about six hours. Recently the cluster was super sized with a Google Search Appliance (AKA "cheese box") Clustering, which involves linking hundreds or thousands of computers to take on massive projects.
It appears that the geniuses over at Disney are not to fond of the Mac. I was spending some good quality geekin-out time with my little girl tonight, and decided to surf over to Disney.com and see what kind of cool stuff they might have. Not knowing much about Disney's stuff, this ToonTown link caught my eye as something that might have some cool cartoons or something. When I clicked through to the page, here is what I am greeted with...
So that's how you wanna play 'eh? I'll just raise my kids on Pixar flicks instead. Hey Disney...
Now here's to having double vision!
There has got to be a cheaper and easier way to create a digital stereoscope, right?
[Via The Cult of Mac]
Ok folks, popular to contrary belief, I am still alive. I have not fallen from the face of the planet. It has been a hectic and busy 2 weeks since Macworld and I am still trying to catch up. So here is the first major post that I thought was worthy of passing along. Thanks to the peeps at Engadget for hookin up the roundup. I am ordering my Cingular Treo 650 first thing in the morning!
Frank
Cingular Treo 650 review roundup:
No doubt we’ll be adding to this list over the coming weeks, but here’s a roundup of the first few reviews of the new Cingular version of the Treo 650 that we’ve been able to find. If you see any more, let us know.
Read - MSNBC
Read - PC Magazine
Read - MobileTechReview
Read - G4TechTV
Read - CNET
Read - SPUG (technically a review of the unlocked GSM version)
