I'm either talking about Palm's new Foleo.... or the company itself. As a long time Palm fan, I feel a little weird saying that, but honestly, if this is the best that Palm can do, then there isn't much of a future for them.

Basically it's a slimmed down laptop; definitely in terms of functionality, surely in size, and also in cost--somewhat. At $500, for a device that is currently being pitched as an email client, this thing seems targeted at a niche for sure.

So who is going to buy it? I'm pretty sure I wouldn't. If I'm going to carry around (let alone pay $500 for) a device with a 25 cm screen, it needs to do a lot. At this point it does nothing more than my Palm TX does, and I carry that in my wallet!

Posted by ra in gadgets and phones at 14:52 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

I did it.
I am free.

The DSL line has stabilized and seems to be working quite well. They did have to knock down the download speed a bit to get it stable, but I can live with it for now.

So no more time warner cable for me. I called them up and canceled earlier today. Interestingly, the first time I called I was disconnected... or hung up on. I was transfered to the cancellations department and told the rep I wanted to cancel my service and he said "oh, I'm sorry... *CLICK!*" and I thought "hmmm... typical".

I raced over to give them their cable modem before they closed at the end of the day, so I have washed my hands of them completely.
I no longer have to deal with their stupid policies (eg. $50 extra for one static IP) and most satisfyingly, I never have to deal with their stupid fucked up billing system ever again.

Posted by ra in tech at 01:24 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

In a startling series of events, Cincinnati Bell managed to get my new DSL line working. No one is more shocked than me! Evidently my loop length was in fact no where near 22 k feet, because I'm seeing download speeds between 3 and 4 Mb/s, which would be impossible at that distance. So basically I've been putting up with the cable company for over two years, for no good reason. Thanks AT&T!

The CinBell tech came out and determined that my DSL problems were caused by noise or other problems on the line, rather than the loop length. They dispatched AT&T (ILEC who owns the lines) to fix it, and they were onsite within two hours. They found and removed a bridge tap, and after a few more changes on the ISP's side, I was suddenly able to keep my DSL line mostly stable at about 3.5 Mb/s.

Posted by ra in tech at 17:37 | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0)

I don't want anything more to do with Dell PowerConnect 2700 series switches. These things are crap!

Today I had a fight with a PowerConnect 2724, and I lost when it committed suicide. The client has four of these switches, but they had never used the management features. The first two seemed fine as I logged in and created some VLAN's. The third one was a pain. It was in managed mode but would not answer on the previously assigned IP or the default management IP. As luck would have it this switch is mounted way the hell up in the air, so a platform lift was required to get to it to cycle it out of managed mode and back, after which I could finally log into it.

Posted by ra in tech at 23:47 | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0)

For a variety of reasons I got motivated to play with my network and my servers over the weekend, and the results were very beneficial security-wise.

First I upgraded all of my access points to WPA2-PSK. They had all been using WPA, and the limitations of my old laptop's wireless adapter had previously prevented this move. My new laptop has an Intel PRO wireless 2200 card, so there was nothing stopping me anymore. I got the laptops, and the Nintendo Wii configured using WPA2. Next came my Palm TX. I suddenly realized that it doesn't support WPA2! A quick search revealed an update available on Palm's website.... for $6. Okaaaaaay. I don't really understand why they are charging for this. A new Windows Mobile device would have WPA2 support included. Besides that, the description doesn't make it clear to me whether the update adds support for WPA2-PSK or just WPA2-Enterprise. I'm not sure what I'll do about this yet, but I'm sticking with WPA2 so the TX is going to have to remain offline for now.

Posted by ra in tech at 17:54 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

I got an unexpected phone call the other day. It was the phone company, trying to sell me DSL. I'm sure I rolled my eyes as soon as they started their pitch.

Required background: I've been trying to get DSL ever since we bought our house, three years ago. In fact, I ordered it from Speakeasy/Covad, and had it installed and sort of online for two weeks. Of course our loop length turned out to be double what SBC/AT&T (the ILEC) claimed it to be, and at 22000 ft the only way to get stable service was to drop it down to 386/128 Kb, from the theoretical 6.0 Mb / 768 Kb service I had ordered. This was quite a blow, since I was still dealing with a billing fuck-up nightmare with the cable company from cable internet service at our apartment. Alas, since I work from home I had no choice but to go with cable again. Still I didn't give up on the hope of being able to tell the cable company to fuck off for good.

Posted by ra in tech at 01:06 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

I recently got my first new keyboard in a long time. In the past there have been very few viable options in keyboards for me, because of a lack of industry interest in ergonomic, corded keyboards (the only kind I like to use). I've seen cordless ergo keyboards around but I'm still a little wary of broadcasting my every keystroke through the air. I've experienced problems with wireless keyboards at client offices where different keyboards and receivers crossed signals and I actually saw one that was receiving input from the wrong keyboard 35 ft away, and through multiple walls. Yikes.

So I finally found a nice corded one. It is the Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000. This one is not actually split-style like my old favorites, the Microsoft Natural series, but instead incorporates some stretched and curved keys to give you similar hand position as the old style. It's also black, and looks awesome. I hate the way beige keyboards look over time. Even if you keep them clean, they start to yellow and look like crap. The Comfort Curve feels very good and it's is a big improvement over my old keyboard, which was quite noisy. It uses very short, low profile keys and they are very quiet even with fast and heavy typing. Oh how I love quiet keyboards!

Posted by ra in computerish at 12:24 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)