When I switched over to Sprint to get the Palm Pre from Verizon Wireless, the switch was painless and quick. In fact, I was surprised that Verizon didn’t try to get me to stay with some offer, like the way AOL used to do. When I moved my old Verizon number over to Sprint, they said it might take 8-12 hours, but in actuality, it took less than one hour.  I didn’t keep checking it but it may even have been under 30 minutes. As a comparison, when I moved my number from Vonage to Ooma, it literally took weeks.

So, with such a smooth transition, it was a little funny when I got one last email from Verizon asking me to take a survey to find out why I left their service.  I started answering some questions about why I left, and after about the 3rd screen, I got this error below:

This error can be caused by many things but the most common is too many requests.  So I guess a lot of people are being asked to take a survey about why they are leaving Verizon Wireless.  Nice parting shot Verizon.

Other than the hype over X-Box Natal and Sony’s motion detection device at E3, one other device came out a little more quietly. Dell’s Alienware has released their new laptop touted as “the most powerful 17″ gaming laptop in the Universe.” I guess they figure the other life forms on other planets use screens larger than 17″ so they don’t have to worry about false advertising.

Of course, this has to come out right after I buy my Dell laptop.  Oh well. It’s a little too big for me anyway.  I’ll keep saying that to myself while I cry myself to sleep.

Jared asked me for more information on the battery on my new Dell Studio 17.  Being the OCD Rain-man that I am, I decided to conduct some testing and document the result here for your reading pleasure.

So to begin, I found out from Dell that the Studio 17 from Best Buy has the 9 cell battery (instead of the 6) which means it’s the most you can have on this model.  Next, I selected the “Dell Recommended” power setting as shown below:

This is basically a middle of the road setting to give you average battery life and average performance.  This seems to be a good compromise between battery life and performance.

Next, I enabled the “Dell Extended Battery Life” in the Battery Meter.  I’m not 100% sure of everything that this does but it only applies when you are running on battery and it changes the color scheme to “Windows Vista Basic,” which may not work with all your programs.  It also turns off the Windows Sidebar (which I guess uses up battery power).

Instead of conducting this test with a fully powered battery, I decided to try to simulate what I would normally do in real life. After max-charging it on Friday night, I let it sit over the weekend without using it. On Monday, when I turned it on with battery power, it was down to 91% battery charge level. I figure this is probably the longest you would go without turning on your laptop after a charge.

During the testing period, I backed up approximately 300 files over WiFi to my Buffalo NAS, copied files to my desktop via WiFi and did other light processing, including using the browser.  What I specifically did NOT do was use the DVD drive at all.  So if you plan on watching a DVD movie, this power test probably will not apply to you.  If you are going to be using it to create and edit Word files, email, and browse the Internet, this power test should be almost exactly what you will get.

The table below shows the battery level (from the Battery Meter) as time progressed (shown in hours and minutes).

As you can see from the table, near the end, the battery level goes down fairly quickly.  From 15% to 7%, it only took 11 minutes, then down to 5% in just 2 more minutes.  At this point, the system turned off automatically.

Once again, keep in mind that this test started from 91%, which was where the level was after not using the computer for 2 days.  If it was charged right before use to 100%, and you set the power setting to “Power saver,” I’m sure you would get a lot more time from the battery.  But I don’t think those results are useful when you are using the computer in real-life situations.  I like longer battery life, but I hate slow computers.

My results show that with moderate use and with the screen on for the entire time of testing, and connected via WiFi, you can get about 3 hours of battery life, even if you start with a slightly less than full chage.  In my book, that’s a pretty good length of time.

For the first time since switching over to Vista, I got a BSOD (Blue screen of death) on my brand new Dell Studio 17 after updating Vista via Microsoft.  Very nice.  After my great experience with the Dell customer support, I decided not to even bother calling them.  After looking around the Interwebs, I came across a post on the Best Buy forum:

http://forums.bestbuy.com/bb/board/message?board.id=Computers_New&thread.id=3137

This post basically explains that the BSOD is caused by the built-in webcam driver which causes a “IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL” fatal error.  To fix this problem, they tell you to download and install a new version of the webcam driver from the Dell website at:

http://ftp.us.dell.com/input/CREATIVE-LABS_INTEGRATED-WEB_A05_R207341.EXE

The self extracting program will automatically uninstall the old driver and install the new driver and reboot your computer.  You must close the webcam driver in order for the installer to finish.  You would think the installer could close the driver for you but I guess that’s asking for too much.

Seeing that ordering a keyboard cover from Dell took 2.5 hours, I figure this BSOD problem probably would have taken about 5 hours to solve over the phone with Dell customer service.  Instead, a few clicks in google, download and I’m done in under 10 minutes.

Boy, these posts are looking more and more like those Apple TV ads.

As you know, I’ve had my love/hate relationship with HP and their horrible customer service.  Well, that honor has moved over to Dell.

Oh, where do I start. After I bought my Dell Studio 17 at Best Buy, I called Dell as soon as I got home to order a keyboard protector and spare AC adapter.  This is what I always do with laptops. Why? Because dust gets into the keyboard and I like a spare AC adapter pre-plugged into the wall at home so I don’t have to get it out of my laptop carry bag.  But I digress.

Toshiba has keyboard covers for all their laptops, while HP doesn’t have any last time I checked.  How about Dell?

Well, I tried looking on the Dell website with no success.  So, I called Dell’s customer service toll free number to find out.  As it happens, I talked to “J.Z.” at Dell who told me that he had the keyboard protector and AC adapter for my laptop and would send it out right away. According to my Ooma account, that call took 32 minutes. That seems a little long but at least it appeared that things were going fine.  My order on Dell’s website appears below:

So I made the order on Friday and I got the UPS shipment 3 days later on Monday.  Wow. So far so good.  I was getting ready to write up a nice glowing report for Dell.  I open the package and I can tell right away that the keyboard protector is too small. It’s for a 13″ laptop, while my Dell is 17″.  Damn it. Also, the power adapter is not Dell but from a company called “Targus.” Strange that Dell wouldn’t sell their own power adapters.  In any case, I bring it home to try it out.

As soon as I plug the AC adapter to my laptop, I get the following dialog box:

WTF?! Oh no! J.Z. totally screwed me over. So, to summarize, after a 32 minute call to J.Z. at Dell, he sent me the wrong keyboard protector and wrong power adapter.  Wow. This beats all records on incompetence.

Now comes the “Hell” part of this story.  First, let me show you my Ooma call log to Dell:

As you can see, I started my calls at 4:36pm and finished a little before 7pm. I’ll spare you the details of call after call without any success.  I talked to Christian, Raoul, Rod, J.D. and some others I forgot to get their names or I got disconnected before I even got their names.  On one call, they transferred me, and the automated machine told me that I got transferred to a non-existing extension and hung-up on me. Very nice Dell.

Another thing that made these calls “Hell,” was the slowness of their order computers. It was so slow that most of them would put me on hold for 2, to 3 times per call for 3 to 5 minutes at a time.  Or maybe they were just playing Solitaire while I was on hold. Luckily, I have a speaker phone so I can just wait for them to return.

Actually, the ones that didn’t put me on hold was worse.  They would all try to sell me more crap. Mostly, they tried to sell me more RAM for my laptop. I kept telling them it was already maxed out at 4Gigs, but they would still look it up on their slow computer, then tell me that it was maxed out. Yes, I just told you that. Then, they would try to sell me a LCD HDTV. Buddy. How about trying to look for that keyboard cover instead?

Are you getting the “Hell” part of this picture yet? I was really getting frustrated.  It’s funny but they would give me a number and extension to call if I got disconnected, but when I would call that number and extension, it was apparently busy and the automated phone machine thingie would just get confused and hang-up and I would have to start all over again from scratch. It actually started to get funny after a while because it was so ridiculous.

Call after call, I got transferred until finally, Christian told me that Dell doesn’t have a keyboard protector for 17″ laptops. Just groovy. This after another guy asked me if I wanted the plastic or rubber version of the protector.  One guy was finally able to give me the return authorization number so that I could return the crap they already sent me, but I wasn’t able to order anything from that guy and I got disconnected. Dell really needs to get their act together.

At the end, J.D. finally came right out and told me the other guy sent me the wrong AC adapter and that he would send out the right one.  At this point, I didn’t care that my credit card wasn’t going to get a refund for weeks for the wrong stuff I got. I just wanted to get the “F” off the phone. I told J.D. to go ahead charge me for another one and send me the correct adapter. By the way, the correct one was about $30 cheaper than the wrong one. Go figure.

So now I still needed a keyboard protector, so as per my usual procedure, I looked on eBay and found one from Hong Kong for $10 (the wrong one from Dell was $16), with free shipping.

Well, this story of hell does have a happy ending.

Fast forward 6 days and I got both the Dell AC adaptor and the keyboard protector from Hong Kong on the same day.  Interesting that the shipment from Hong Kong takes the same amount of time as the UPS shipment from Dell in Lockbourne, Ohio.  The keyboard protector for $10 cost them $5 for shipping (free shipping to me).  So $10 minus $5 shipping equals $5. How do these people make any money?

This time, the Dell AC power adapter was the right one.  However, the adapter that they sent was not exactly the same as the one that came with the laptop and did not have the cool blue light on the end.  Oh well.  At least it works.

So what’s the moral of this story? Good customer service is hard to find in the tech world. But when I do, I’ll write about it. I hope I live that long.

My Toshiba Qosmio started to turn off by itself, apparently from overheating. Since I can’t have my computer turning off unexpectedly, I immediately went online to compare laptops. I didn’t want to spend $2k+ for a crazy fast game laptop, but I can’t buy one of those super cheap and slow laptops either. I also decided I wanted to try a different company to see how they are compared to Sony, HP, and Toshiba (which are the ones I’ve already tried.)  At this point, I’ve gotten used to Vista so that’s no problem anymore.

One thing I noticed is a lot of the computers come with 4Gigs of RAM and so are installed with Vista 64-bit instead of 32-bit.  I’ve had a few minor incompatibility problems with my Vista 64-bit but I’ve managed to get around most of them so I was willing to go that route.

Last time when I got the Toshiba, I actually wanted to get a Dell but I needed a new one that day so I couldn’t order one from Dell. This time, Best Buy had some Dell laptops in stock so I went over there to take a look and decided to buy the Studio 17 for $729.99.

The Dell Studio 17 162B laptop has these specs:

• Intel® Core™2 Duo mobile processor T6400
  Features 2 processing cores, 800MHz system bus and 2.0GHz processor speed per core
• 4GB SoDIMM DDR2 memory
• Slot-loading DVD±RW/CD-RW drive
• 17″ WXGA widescreen LCD CCFL display
• 320GB SATA hard drive (5400 rpm)
• Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD
• Intel® High Definition audio; HDMI connector
• Built-in 2.0-megapixel webcam with microphone
• 8-in-1 media reader
  Supports Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, Secure Digital, Secure Digital Input/Output, Secure Digital High Density, Secure Digital High Capacity, MultiMediaCard and xD-Picture card formats.
• 1 IEEE 1394 FireWire port
• 4 high-speed USB 2.0 ports
• Dell 1510N wireless networking mini-card (802.11b/g/n)
• Long battery life (Up to 6 hours and 33 minutes)
• Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition 64-bit operating system with Service Pack 1 (SP1) pre-installed

Basically, the Studio 17 is a retail only version of this model, and is meant to be a cheap 17″ laptop for casual users and web browsers.

The first thing I liked was the big 17″ screen which is nice and bright but the resolution is only 1440 x 900, which is on the low side for this sized screen.  If you order this unit from Dell, you have the option to get higher resolution but it will cost more. So if you’re going to use this for editing high resolution photos, this might not be the right one for you.

The AC power adapter is very small compared to my Toshiba and has a 3 prong AC side with ground. The plug that goes into the laptop has a blue light which looks very cool in the dark. You can see that the AC adapter outputs power even after being unplugged by this blue light.

The power switch is on the right side of the LCD hinge and unlike the Toshiba, lights up as soon as you press it. Other indicator lights also start blinking to let you know that your computer is on. So far so good.

But when I start typing on the keyboard, I notice that the number “4″ is not working. I take the key off and use a cleaning duster can to blow out any particles and re-assemble the key and I got it to work properly. Not a great start but at least I got it to work. The keyboard layout is fine but the keys feel a little “plasticky” or “clanky” compared to what I’m used to.  However, I did test the keyboard at the store before I bought it and I was able to type very fast on it.

Compared to the Toshiba Qosmio, the CPU is clearly slower, even though this laptop has 4Gigs (Qosmio had 2Gigs). Some of my heavy duty DJ applications stutter a little. On my old Qosmio, I was able to open many tabs in Firefox with websites as quickly as I could move my mouse. On my new Dell, there’s definitely some delay and stuttering when doing this same task. I guess that’s the difference between $730 and $1300.

The next thing I noticed was the speakers were back to the very cheap type that is used on most laptops. Yes, I can hear things but it’s just not the same as the super high quality speakers on my old Qosmio. This is not a fair comparison because the Qosmio is a “game” laptop so the speakers are top notch.  The headphone jacks are on the right side, which for me works better than laptops where the jacks are in front.

The DVD slot is on the right, and unlike all laptops I’ve had in the past, this one is slot loading. This means you just push the DVD into the slot like the one in your car. When you want the DVD out, you press a touchpad “button” on the top row above the keyboard. I hated the touchpad area on the Qosmio and don’t like this one on the Dell for the same reasons. It’s very cool to look at with the lights, but call me old fashioned, but I like physical keys that I know I’ve pressed.  However, I think a lot of people will like this touchpad area which also controls the DVD/CD play as well as launching media applications.

My old Qosmio had 2 USBs, 1 eSata and HDMI output, whereas this Dell has 4 USBs, 1 eSata, 1 Firewire, and HDMI output.  The Dell is designed with no outputs on the back or front.  I like this design decision because it’s always a pain to have to turn the laptop around to see the back so you can plug things in and out. Putting everything on the sides makes it a lot easier.

The battery is contained in the back “lift” that acts as a horizontal leg to lift the entire laptop higher in the back. Although, this makes the laptop thicker when traveling, I still like the extra battery time, plus the angle of the laptop itself.

All in all, this is a good middle of the ground laptop with a relatively long battery life.  It’s not fast enough to be a gaming machine, but with the larger screen and keyboard, it wants to be a desktop replacement. It’s probably too big for most travelers but I don’t mind commuting with it.  Even though the resolution could be higher, with my failing eye sight, I like the big 17″ screen with bigger fonts.  So, this is for the non-gaming user, who wants a large screen but don’t want to pay for it.  That’s would be me.

After resisting for about a year from talking about Twitter, I finally have to say something.

CNN “bought” the top Twitter account, which has 947,000 followers. The “sale” is not official because that violates Twitter’s terms of service, so the actual amount has not been disclosed. When the purchase was made, second place was Ashton Kutcher, followed by Britney Spears.  Kutcher challenged CNN to be the first to get to one million followers, which he has the first to do.

What a world we live in now, where a regular guy can have almost one million followers on a website, beating celebrities, then sell his list to a major media outlet.

I have mixed feelings about this. First, let me say that when I was made aware of Twitter about a year ago, I wrote a post (that I did not publish) about how stupid the idea was.  Then I remembered that I said the exact same thing about Myspace when they first came out so I realized that Twitter would be big as well, if my record held up.  Which apparently it has.

But I digress.

In case you have lived in a cave, Twitter is a social networking website that allows users to have “followers” that are sent short messages from the user via SMS messages on their cell phones.  Basically, it’s a opt-in, SMS mailing list in real time.  It’s been used to get big news items out of India during the terrorist attacks, and during the Olympics.

What amazes me is that a regular person can get almost one million people to be interested enough in what he’s doing to sign up as a follower. He must have an amazing life because I don’t even want to be a follower for my own life, let alone somebody I don’t even know.

At first, it seemed like a big waste of time. But now that this guy has “sold” his account to CNN, maybe it’s not a big waste of time. Maybe it’s a way to make money. Spammers will get on this next for sure, and buying up big accounts so that they can spam followers.

Twitter hasn’t figured out how to monetize their business yet. I imagine it shouldn’t be that hard to add a little advertising at the end of each message they send out.  Even if the message is just “… this message brought to you by…”

Just about the time people moved over to Facebook, I started to use Myspace.  So, when Twitter becomes last years’ news, I’ll be signing up.

If you want great sound to come out of your laptop, or you’re a mobile DJ, you can either get an external sound device (via USB) or a PC Card (PCMCIA) to plug into your laptop. PCMCIA cards are about the size of credit cards but thicker.  Below are some laptop cards that are on the market.

Creative Audigy 2 ZS (left), Echo Indigo DJ (middle), Creative ExpressCard X-Fi (right)

Currently, Creative Labs no longer support their old Audigy 2 Z5 PCMCIA card (left most card in picture above).  This is too bad because it works really well.  You can find some on sale on Ebay but it’s hard to find.

Only the new X-Fi Xtreme Audio  ExpressCard is available for $79.99 (right most in picture) from Creative Labs.  The X-Fi requires a ExpressCard/54 slot and will not work with the old PCMCIA or PC Card slots.  But since my Toshiba Qosmio has the ExpresCard slot, I decided to try it out.

The Echo Indigo DJ is also available, bust you must have a PCMCIA slot on your laptop (see below). So the choices are pretty much down to the Echo or Creative and it just comes down to which type of slot you have on your laptop.

When I got my Toshiba, I wasn’t even aware that there were 2 different types of slots available.  The 2 styles are: the old style PCMCIA slot, and now the newer ExpressCard slots.  So be aware of this before purchasing your laptop.

Echo Indigo DJ close-up

What I like about the Echo (pictured above)  is that only the larger portion sticks out of the laptop and the head phone jack is on the side.  Therefore, if your slot is on the side of your laptop, you can have your cable plug in very close to your laptop without it sticking out.

The picture below shows a close-up of the Creative card with the following features:

• Headphone out / Line out / Optical out (shared 1/8″ mini jack)
• Line In / Microphone In / Optical in (shared 1/8″ mini jack)
• Speaker Docking Module connector (5.1/7.1 surround sound with the Surround Sound Upgrade kit sold separately)

Creative ExpressCard X-Fi close-up

Since the output equipment I’m connecting to are not state-of-the-art stuff, I really couldn’t tell any difference in qualty.  Even with good head-phones on, I really couldn’t tell any difference between the units.  But keep in mind, I’m not a sound engineer, or expert in this area.  Both produced what I would consider quality that is above what would be needed for normal use by any consumer, and maybe even some pro-sumers.

One thing that is a problem for me with the Creative and my Toshiba is that when you press the card in, it pops out.  At first, this seemed like a great feature to remove the card.  However, when using it, you have to be very careful not to bump it or it will get unplugged.  If you are doing a live performance, this is way too risky.  Even if your cable gets pushed against your laptop, this could cause your card to be unplugged.  I’m not sure if this is only a feature of the Toshiba or if that’s the way the ExpressCard slots work.

The other smaller problem with the Creative is that the jacks are located on the outside.  If your slot is on the side of your laptop, and your Creative sticks out, and your cables come out from there, you will need a lot of space on the side of your laptop.  If you’re cramped for space, this may not be the best solutin for you.

The bad news is, that’s all that’s available out there.  Alternatively, you can get an external USB sound output device from just about anywhere from $2.90 on Amazon up to $40 or so.  The Xitel MP3 Streamer is a little more expensive ($49.95 MSRP) than the cheap ones, but works just as well as the internal cards. It’s a little more expensive but it comes with a 30′ audio cable so keep that in mind when pricing.

So, if you have a PCMCIA slot on your laptop, I would go with the Echo.  If you have a ExpressCard slot, I cannot recommend the Creative Labs X-Fi card unless your laptop puts the card internally.  If you want to use an external device, I would recommend the Xitel MP3 Streamer, which is what I use with my Toshiba.

If you have some old IDE drives around but can’t access the data, you can get this Coolmax CD-350 converter from Coolmax (MSRP $33.99).  Amazon has it on sale for $22.73 at the time of this writing but their prices change requently so you’ll have to look for yourself.

Compared to the Vantec Nexstar, this converter is… well, let’s just say it, ugly.  But it does work.  It will convert 2.5-inch, 3.5-inch, or 5.25-inch IDE/SATA drives and connect them via your USB 2.0 port to your computer.  USB 2.0 is supposed to deliver 480 Mbps transfer rates.  I didn’t benchmark anything so I don’t really know if this is true or not.

As for power, for 2.5-inch drives, the power is supplied via the USB bus.  For others, there’s a separate power supply that you plug into the drive for power.  There’s also a power switch to turn the unit on/off.

All in all, it’s not pretty, but this converter does do what it says it does.

As you may or may not know, I’ve spent the last month or so trying to convert from XP to Vista with mostly good results.  One new Vista problem I’ve been having is my HP SC 2500 network printer keeps going offline and I’m not able to get it back online without deleting and re-installing it.

After reading some posts, and doing some trial and error testing, I was finally able to figure out what the problem was.  Basically, the driver was hard coding the IP address in the setting and when the IP address would change, it would be “offline.”

First, bring up the “Printers” list from the control panel.  Highlight the printer in question, and right-click to get the following menu shown below.  Choose “Run as administrator,” then “Properties.”

The “properties” shown below is the result AFTER I fixed the problem. Above the line with the checkmark is the original PORT with the absolute IP address.  This is what was originally selected.  Click on the “Add Port…” button shown below.

Now, you will see the following dialog box.  Select “Standard TCP/IP Port.”  Click on “New Port…”

Now, you have to find out what the Port Name is for your printer.  With the HP printer that I have, you push the “Setup” button, then go through the menu to find the “Network” configuration print operation.  This will print out the Network settings, including the Port Name.  Enter that name in the “Port Settings” as shown below.  Set the “Protocol” to “Raw” and Port number to 9100, and turn on SNMP status.

That’s it!  You’re done and your network printer should now be “online” properly.  Why do you have to do this when it wasn’t needed in XP?  That’s how Microsoft is trying to improve your experience with their new OS.  Thanks Microsoft for a job well done.  NOT!