Carousel of Hate

I have been considering the iPhone for the first time after the announcement of iPhone 3G and iPhone 2.0 software.  Before that I was more than happy to stick with the wonderful handsets from Sony Ericsson.I am presently using T-Mobile and I have been on their network for over seven years.  My services are as follows:

•  5000 Minutes $99.99
• Buddy time (Unlimited text and Mobile to Mobile) $10.00
• T-Zones (Unlimited 2.5G data on handset) $5.99
• Monthly Total $115.98

On AT&T with the equivalent services my bill would look as follows:

• Unlimited Voice/3G Data $129.99 
• Unlimited Text $20.00
• Monthly Total $149.99

The AT&T rates do not even include sending text messages outside the US.  T-Mobile charges $0.15 per message to send an international text and the incoming messages come out of my text messaging plan.  AT&T charges $0.25 to send an International text and $0.20 to receive an international text unless you buy their international text plan for $9.99 which includes too international text messages and additional messages are $0.20.Now to be fair, the T-Mobile price would go up to $129.98 if I had a proper T-Zones plan like T-Zones Total Internet however I can do anything I need on the phone with the T-Zones plan.  T-Mobile has not officially released their 3G network so their rates may go up but that remains to be seen.  Also if I was on the T-Zones Total Internet I would be able to tether my notebook to my phone via Bluetooth and use the phone as a modem, the iPhone still does not support this without hacking that I am aware of.So other than getting an iPhone what am I getting for  the additional $34.01 per month, $408.12 per year and $816.24 at the end of my required two-year contract before taxes!Take for example how another country is promoting the iPhone.  Optus in Australia has the following statement on their iPhone pricing page “Optus is making the iPhone 3G affordable for everyone.”  Does that even sound like something you would hear spoken aloud in AT&T offices?Also because of the progressive nature of Australian government, they do not allow things like mobile phones to be locked down to a carrier.  So when an Australian iPhone user travels to another country, they can simply purchase a local pre-paid SIM and have a local number without all the international roaming surcharges… GO USA!Â

Can somebody please wake me up from this bad dream because it only keeps getting worse.  I visited a web site today that announced I needed to install the Adobe Flash Player.  I tried to install several timed by clicking “Install” on the window that popped up.  Finally I clicked on the “Adobe Flash Player Installer” link which took me to this TechNote on the Adobe web site.

Am I reading things correctly “Adobe Flash Player is not supported for playback in a 64-bit browser…”?  What in the world is stopping Adobe from releasing a 64-Bit Flash Player?  I know it cannot be as simple as re-compiling it with the “64-Bit” checkbox, but people come on!  64-Bit computing has been increasing in popularity and availability for the last few years, is there really any excuse for this?

So I finally upgraded my computer about a year ago now. I knew I would be running a virtual machine so I wanted to make sure I have the memory and processor. I ended up with a Core 2 Duo and 3GB or RAM. TO take advantage of the memory I knew I would need to use a 64-Bit OS. Originally I ran 32-Bit Vista but quickly decided to retreat to XP. A friend recommended that I use XP 64, I had no experience and was a bit hesitant to do it but knew it would give me the best use of the processor and full use of memory.

Along the way I have found a series of ups and downs trying to adapt. I was surprised and amazed at the number of applications that have specific 64-Bit versions of their applications. Overall application support was not a problem and I could run all that I needed. Lately I have been running into problems with drivers. It started when I tried to connect a Visioneer Strobe XP 100. At that point I did not realize that the 32-Bit drivers would not work, so I connected and tried and tried. Finally I phoned support and was told that I could try the Vista 64 drivers but they could not guarantee that they would work for XP 64 and they had no plans to support XP 64. Needless to say that did not work and I gave up on scanner support under XP 64.

Then a few days ago I needed to have a second network adapter to my computer. Since it is a small form factor the easiest way is to use a USB to Ethernet adapter. After doing some research I came to find out there are only two or three that actually are on the HCL for XP 64 and Vista 64. One of them was the Apple USB Ethernet adapter but since people in the forums were having trouble getting them going I figured it would be better to avoid this since I would probably need to dig through Boot Camp to find the drivers if they were even released yet. Then I found the D-Link DUB-E100, it was on the list and even less than $30. It arrived last night so I plugged it in today and no-where on the disc were drivers that would install on XP 64. I went to their web site and the download version was the same as the disc with the product. I did a search for “DUB-E100 xp 64″ and the first link is a product manual for the product that has a section telling you how to install the XP 64 drivers. I noticed two things about this manual. The URL indicates it is for 3.4 not 3.3, and also it is from the D-Link Australia site. AFter playing with the URL I was able to navigate to the Autstrlian drivers and download the 3.4 package with the XP 64 drivers.

On the flip-side I also needed to use a USB to Serial adapter I bought years ago, but guess what… I needed to buy a new version from the company because they did not offer XP 64 drivers for an “old” product. After researching I found a totally generic product that scared me a little but but claimed to support almost ever operating system from Windows 98 to Vista 64 including Windows Server 2003 64! It arrived in the mail with a 3 CM disc and I put the disc in the system. Autorun opens a splash screen with options to install drivers for the product and all the drivers are clearly in their own folders on the disc. The install goes smoothly and there are even drivers for OS X and Intel!

Someone please explain to me why a generic little USB to Serial adapter that cost $17 can have broad range driver support but USB to Ethernet adapters from the likes of Linksys, Netgear and others cannot support XP 64? Why does Apple upgrade OS X to support 64-Bit processors and without obvious turmoil in requiring new driver models? Every version of Windows in recent history has had a “new and improved” driver model which while it will cause a little hassle initially will solve the problems and be the end-all, only to be replaced again for some reason?

Finally I will note that I am displeased with scanner support in OS X. The Visioneer XP 100 will not work under OS X and I see no reason why Apple should not have better native scanner support. I thought Twain was supposed to be an industry standard? All the scanners I can find that are compatible with OS X are large desktop sized ones and I just wanted a small portable scanner for occasional use.

I had no idea about my poor friend Aaron. If I had, then I believe I would have been more sensitive. Here he has been dead for almost 204 years. I will finish this post with a copy of the epitaph.

Uncertain life, how swift it flies
man lives tomorrow dies.
This hour in health & strength & bloom
& the very next he fills the tomb
Ask you for proof, Behold it here
And give your friend a ?? of ??.
(bottle of beer?)

We will miss you Aaron!

Now who gets his MacBook?

I found this post at Gizmodo today on how to deal with people using bluetooth headsets. The funniest part is I so thought I was watching my friend Aaron in the future. Truth be told Aaron is not stuffy but rather very practical. He just makes me laugh. Thanks Aaron!

NOT!

My mother received an email last night that contained an attachment called winmail.dat. I have dealt with this before and continue to find it annoying. I am putting a link to a useful article that explains how to deal with this. Feel free send this link to anyone who is sending them to you!

I am getting more and more baffled today. I was running iChat last night and still this morning. I closed the application and several hours later opened it back up. When I opened it up it took me through the setup interview asking me to put in my account details again and to enable Jabber and Bonjour. Why is my PowerBook acting so strange lately?

Several weeks ago I ran into a problem with my .Mac account and sync. I have my account set to sync Contacts, Bookmarks, Email accounts, Keychains etc. I was on .Mac web mail to send a message. When I tried to use an email address from my contacts it took me to a page that said my Contacts were not synced and would I like to erase them or merge them. I choose merge because that would seem the best option. I sent my email message and went on happy as a lark.

Several days later I was looking at my contacts on my PowerBook and I noticed that something was strange. I had roughly twice the number of contacts that I previously remembered having. Then I started looking around. The data from the contact records had been corrupted. Some of the names were mixed with other phone numbers and email addresses etc. It made no sense how it was all messed up, but at this point I figured I would email .Mac support and expect to go through all 300 entries and put together a complete, de-duplicated set of addresses again. I may have a backup from where I moved from my original PowerBook to the new PowerBook but I do not have the backup drive with me now.

So today I was just working on my blog when a message popped up on the screen.

Now I have only 30 contacts in my address book. Anyone have a thought about this one?