Wednesday, June 30, 2004

V600 Update

Well, I've been almost too embarrassed to post this.

I'd blogged on June 12 that my Motorola V600 cellphone had gone silent. My wireless carrier tech support had suggested I return the phone to Amazon for a replacement. Amazon were very good about it, and I received a new replacement phone within a week.

Before returning the non-working Motorola V600 I decided to clear it by doing a Master Clear. Then I did something I really wish I had not - I checked the old phone to confirm that its RingTones still weren't working. To my astonishment and dismay they were now working! Now I had two Motorola V600 cellphones, and had to return one of them. I really could not return the older one with a clear conscience, since now there was nothing wrong with it.

To cut a long story short, I returned the new replacement cellphone...

Why the cellphone started working:
My only guess is this was because I took out the battery and left it out for a period of time, then put it back in and switched on the phone. This seems to do some sort of reset. Tech support had taken me through this step, but had not asked me to leave the battery out for long enough.

Wednesday, June 23, 2004

Microsoft follows Yahoo

Microsoft is going to increase Hotmail Storage from 2 megabytes to 250 megabytes according to this article on MyWay

I wondered how long it would take for them to decide this, and of course it's two and a half times Yahoo's new storage. Hopefully there are not as many glitches as Yahoo is having...

Friday, June 18, 2004

Smaller Nokias

eWeek reports Flip Phones Among Nokia's Five New Models

In my recent cellphone hunt, I ruled out the Nokia models because of their size - their new Flip Phones can only be smaller.

Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Yahoo Accounts up to 100Mb

My Way News: "Yahoo! Upgrades E-Mail Capacity to 100 MB"

But that doesn't explain why I'm struggling to login to my Yahoo account now. Maybe this does:
From a news article this morning "Big Sites Slowed by Attack on Akamai" on Editor and Publisher.

Saturday, June 12, 2004

Sounds of silence

Well, my Motorola V600 lasted a week (and what a week it was!).

Up until yesterday my V600 was working perfectly. Then I transferred a couple of MIDI and MP3 files to it. I noticed that some of the MIDI files did not play, no problem, I just deleted them. Then while I tried to play one MIDI or MP3 ringtone, I got a message - "File corrupt - delete?" - to which I said yes. I little later I realized that none of the ringtones, not even the built-in ones which came with the phone, were working. When you scroll through the list of ringtones and stop on one, it normally plays - none of them play. Not in the menu to choose Ring Detail, or from the MultiMedia/Sounds menu. I also made sure that all the volumes were set to the highest. Also, the startup and shutdown sounds work fine, and I'd assume they use the some speaker...

Another weird thing - if I set the phone to Ring & Vibrate, it doesn't even Vibrate, but if I set it to Vibrate, that works.

After a call to support, a Power off and wait, and a Master Reset of the phone, it's still the same. They suggested I return the phone.

Tuesday, June 08, 2004

Treo 600 sans camera

Yesterday I read about a camera-less version of the Treo 600, which costs the same as the Treo 600, and (according to eWeek) is not available to consumers. There is also an article about it on Phonescoop.

Saturday, June 05, 2004

Got the V600!



Well, I finally got the Motorola V600 (after a long enough wait), and activated it this morning. The reception is much better than my old V60 (shown on the right in the picture). Posted by Hello

Friday, June 04, 2004

Cellphone twilight zone

I'm a-waiting and a-waiting my new cellphone.
The waiting IS the hardest part.
That still didn't stop me looking at another interesting cellphone, the Nokia 6620 (Review on Phonescoop)
This is a weird, squat looking phone.
Some of Nokia's cellphones really look weird...

Thursday, June 03, 2004

Warning - too cheap!

When a version of a well-known brand software goes on sale for $10 or less after mail-in rebates, beware!
I bought version 8.0 of MusicMatch JukeBox Deluxe for $10 after mail-in rebates. What a bargain I thought! But I forgot the old axiom "You get what you pay for".

The install went great. The program even updated itself to version 8.2 without much of a problem. Then I looked for something in Windows Explorer, and my DVD writer drive letter was not showing. No problem, this is Windows, so when in doubt, reboot. The CDROM drive was showing, but the DVD drive still wasn't showing. I went into Control Panel and found the entry for the DVD drive. It was disabled, and I could not enable it. I uninstalled MusicMatch. It didn't undo the mess it had made. Fortunately I had created a System Restore Point before installing MusicMatch (One of the best features of Windows XP). After a System Restore the DVD writer was back and working
Then I contacted MusicMatch support, and did a search for MusicMatch problems on the Web.
There was a whole lot of info at gadget girl
Version 8 is regarded as the worst version of MusicMatch ever. It seems things steadily got worse starting with version 7. The only suggestion seems to be to download and use version 7.5

Sometimes software is just too cheap...

Wednesday, June 02, 2004

Small Clie thoughts

There are numerous articles and responses to the "Sony to Halt Sales of Clie PDAs in U.S." news like My Way News, Brighthand and PDABuzz

After my initial surprise, I've come to similar conclusions to those in the PDABuzz article. PalmOne had indicated that it would be moving from handhelds to smartphones earlier this year. This is apparently due to saturation of the (U.S.) market for standalone PDAs. I must admit, the combination of a PDA and a phone into a smartphone makes sense, and the Treo 600 is close to being the ideal smartphone. I had wondered why Sony had not brought out a Palm OS based smartphone - all their Sony Ericsson smartphones are Symbian OS based. With smartphones being "the next big (or little) thing", Sony had to choose between creating a Palm OS based smartphone from scratch, or enhancing their current smartphones...

Tuesday, June 01, 2004

Sony to exit key handheld arenas - News - ZDNet

Sony to exit key handheld arenas - News from ZDNet

Say what????
Oh no...
argh!

Anyone want to buy a used but well looked-after Clie NX60?