Treo 650

I’ve finally scrambled to the temptation and bought the Treo 650 last night on my way home from work. The account migration from AT&T to Cingular was very painless and quick, so full marks there for the Cingular Store in Hoboken.

The phone is smaller and lighter than I expected. The size is perfect for my hand, not too large to carry comfortably (like the Clie) or too small so that compromises the screen size.

I’ve never been a fan for thumb board but after using Treo’s thumb board I am very much convinced that it is very quick to use. It helps that the tactile feedback from Treo’s thumb board is excellent, not some soft/mushy keys that some PDA seems to have. And the way the OS with the 5-ways navigation keys make it very easy to use the phone one handed without using the stylus.

The call quality is excellent when compares against my old SE Z600. It can be due to Treo’s quad-bands capability to tap into Cingular’s 850MHz towers whereas the Z600’s tri-bands can only use the 1900MHz band.

No problem with the phone resetting itself, as reported widely in the web. Probably it is because I did a clean hotsync profile so none of the crap I had for my Clie got onto the Treo.

The only thing I wish to be better is AppShelf support for Treo. Right now the AppShelf doesn’t draw the miniPad icons properly as well as some issues with regular icons. I really don’t want to use other launcher such as Zlauncher but if AppShelf will not support the Treo, I guess I’ll have to switch.

March 9, 2005 2

Skype Part II

So I am talking to my friend from the U.K., Simon, over Skype right now. He is in New Zealand on 55.6kbps dialup connection and the sound quality is very good. There are occasional break up in sounds but that’s probably because we were both using the internet while we talked. Also sometimes the echo comes through and I can tell there is some delay in hearing myself. I am sure if Simon is using broadband the quality will be excellent. Pretty nifty for talking to someone half way around the world for free (more or less)!

Also, it seems that there is a weird interaction between Skype and ecto. Whenever I sent a post from ecto, Skype will drop my call. Weird…

March 6, 2005 0

SpaceShipOne in National Air and Space Museum

Another great reason to visit Washington D.C.

February 28, 2005 0

Trans-Atlantic Communications

So I had been thinking about giving my mum a call this week. Let me explain that I don’t generally call my parents unless it is an emergency. When I first moved across to the U.S. from the U.K., my mum will call once a week. Then gradually, the calls went to couple of times a month, then once a month, and recently once a few months. Probably because I never call her back. Even when I was on the phone with her, I never can think of things to talk about. She would asked about how thing is going, I would just answer “Fine”. Strange? Perhaps, since Leah doesn’t seem to trouble chatting to her mum about anything and everything.

Anyway I digressed. The reason I was going to call is because since my visit to the U.K. last month and bought her a new computer, she had not give me a call. Even though I sent her an email about how to set up Microsoft Office on her computer with detail instructions and explicitly said that to give me a call if she runs into trouble. I was 100% expecting a tech support call from her but no, na-da, nothing, not a ring.

Anyhow, tonight the phone rang and Leah thought it was the DNC because they called earlier in the week and promised to call back later. It was my mum instead when I picked up the phone. Apparently they have finally sold my beloved car (but I forgot to ask how much they managed to sell it for). They are also going to sell their house and move to rental house/apartment to save money. Mind you, the current house has 4 bedrooms for the two of them! They bought it just when I finished college, looking for work, and I was staying there during that summer so we did need the space.

And apparently I misjudged her computer skills because she installed Office without trouble. Even managed to follow my instruction and converted one of her Access database to the new format too.

Crap! It’s 3:13 a.m. already! And I need to wake in just over 5 hours to go to work on a Sunday! If I go to some sort of haven/hell when I die I am going to ask for a refund for all the time I somehow lost…