Well, for months now I’ve been bitching about verizon being a great cellular service provider with (by far) the shittiest cell phones. I’ve spoken with a lot of people (alpha geeks and regular cellphone users) who agree that Verizon’s phones are stuck in the stone age. Finally today they announced the Treo 600 will be available from Verizon. I just bought one. It doesn’t have bluetooth but it’s built on Palm OS 5 which means that I’m not dependent upon Verizon to *support* bluetooth. Instead, I’ve just got to wait a few weeks for some plucky developer to write a bluetooth driver for one of the bluetooth SD cards. The only thing that the Treo doesn’t have is bluetooth, otherwise it’s just about the perfect phone for me (given that I’ve got tons of crap on my Palm and now finally I can just use one device to run my phone and my Palm apps).
I haven’t purchased a data plan from Verizon yet but likely will since I know I can check IMAP over SSL on Palm OS 5 which would mean I can do email from my cell, too. Email from phone == More [beach||patio] time.
Calendar
- 2008-11-20 Fall play @ RBR - Romeo & Juliet
- 2008-11-21 Fall play @ RBR - Romeo & Juliet
- 2008-11-22 Fall play @ RBR - Romeo & Juliet
- 2008-11-23 Fall play @ RBR - Romeo & Juliet
- MSSB @ M Shanghai Den
Our monthly first Saturday gig. Awesome Schezwan food!
When: Dec 6, 2008 9:00:00 PM
Where: M Shanghai Den in Brooklyn,New York
Posted by:richardpetermorris
Watching
- Add Jim as your Netflix Friend
- Octopussy
- The Spy Who Loved Me
- Moonraker
- Licence to Kill
- The Man with the Golden Gun
- A View to a Kill
Subscribe
- Bagelturf - An Aperture Workflow Example: Selecting 6 Images From 229 - excellent aperture workflow tutorial
- All Scientific Articles, Research, Landscape and Human Health Laboratory, University of Illinois - Human Health Benefits Of Natural Landscapes
- Natural Settings Help Brain Fatigue - Well Blog - NYTimes.com - Attention restoration theory suggests that walks in nature and views of green space capture our involuntary attention, giving our directed attention a needed rest.
- Jonathan Haidt on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives | Video on TED.com - Psychologist Jonathan Haidt studies the five moral values that form the basis of our political choices, whether we're left, right or center. In this eye-opening talk, he pinpoints the moral values that liberals and conservatives tend to honor most.
- Pollan's Proposals - For the time-strapped who didn't get around to reading Pollan's recent NYT's magazine piece on food policy, here is a great overview of that article.
- Multitasking Can Make You Lose ... Um ... Focus - NYTimes.com - As our minds fill with noise ? feckless synaptic events signifying nothing ? the brain gradually loses its capacity to attend fully and gradually to anything,
- Mayor promotes traffic-calming aids - To slow traffic and to protect children who walk to school, Mayor Pasquale Menna wants to increase traffic-calming measures and pedestrian crossings on busy access streets in the borough.
- Cities rethink wisdom of 50s-era parking standards - USATODAY.com - Officials hope that offering the freedom to forgo parking will lead to denser, more walkable, transit-friendly development.
- Scott Russell Sanders - Just read "A Private History of Awe." Wonderful book that resonated on so many different levels.
- Paris-Brest-Paris randonneurs go for distance - someday.
Add Jim to your del.icio.us network
I thought the Verizon thing was a matter of principle. Their interrupted reception on the train, antipathy to technology, their commitment to old technology because it generates more profit and withholding higher-tech stuff from the marketplace, etc.
So they put a new toy on the market, which still doesn’t have what you want, and you smile and drop your drawers - so much for principles!
Damn.
Not quite. Kent’s case is overstated because I did not extend or renew my contract w/ Verizon so I’m really no deeper into verizon than I was last week. Details follow for those interested in following this saga . . .
I hate that verizon prevents their customers from using phones that don’t resemble something from the stoneage. I’d always suspected that verizon did everything in their power to squeeze as much money out of their customers while offering the lamest technology. Recently, I had this theory confirmed by a friend of Kent’s who deals w/ verizon.
I was ready to go with T-Mobile and actually went to the local store at the mall, ready to throw down my credit card and do the switch. I priced the phone i wanted (the treo, true it doesn’t have bluetooth but at this point i can’t get a phone the does Palm OS5, IMAP over SSL *AND* bluetooth. The next revision of the treo is slated to do bluetooth but that won’t be available til next year. At this point, despite my serious attachment to all things bluetooth, being able to do email w/ attachments over SSL is more valuable to me). Lack of bluetooth is simply one easy-to-explain reason to hate verizon. Lack of Palm OS5/IMAP SSL is slightly harder to rant about but just as/more important.
So anyway, I settled on my T-Mobile plan and was ready to rock when they told me they didn’t have any Treo’s in stock but another store did.
Between leaving that store and visiting the Seekonk TMobile store, I went to the Verizon store (also at the mall) to get out of my service contract. I had up until this point just sort of assumed that I’d be able finesse my way out of my contract. Despite a clear mismatch in rhetorical skills, I was unable to convince the drone or her manager at the Verizon store that I should be able to cancel my contact without paying the $175.00 penalty (perhaps i think too highly of my rhetorical skills;-). Disgusted by my lack of success here, I headed home to try my argument with someone over the phone at the Verizon customer service number. But this too met with no success. This is where I had to walk the line between being principled and fiscally retarded. I could either just eat the $175 on principle and move to Tmobile for the sake of getting the treo or I could just keep things status quo until my contract expires and vote my conscience on my next plan. In the end –after way too much time on the phone w/ verizon- I ended up with the phone/technology I wanted without extending my contract. This seems more like a win to me than a cave-in, but to each their own.
So while it’s not a great moment in cell phone history, it’s definitely not the exercise in spinelessness that Kent’s post alludes to. I mean, it’s not like I got a WindowsME/Pocket PC phone ;-)
Touche!
MAYBE ITS NOT THE PHONE MAYBE ITS THE USER WHOIS CRAPPY
ummm. sure. MRCAPS LOCK, whatever you say ;-)