One of the coolest accessories for any cell phone is the Touchstone charging kit for the Palm Pre. This allows you to charge your Palm Pre without wires, just by placing the unit on top of the round charger.

Even the secret downtown Radio Shack was out of the Touchstone and all the regular outlets were out of stock as well. Back to Ebay I went and found a place in New Jersey that had around 50 of them but only 4 were left. I had to pay $10 over the MSRP (but still $10 less than buying it from Sprint at $70). But hey, what’re you gonna do when they have you over a barrel?

The “kit” comes with the round base (shown above) which plugs into the USB charger that came with the Palm Pre.  It also comes with a new back cover for the Pre as shown below.

The new cover (left) is not glossy like the original and does not match the front plastic but personally, I like the non-glossy look better and it doesn’t show finger prints as much.

If you have a Palm Pre, this charger is a no brainer purchase. To charge your Pre, all you have to do is place it on top of the round charger. No cables, no plugging in. Interestingly, while the Palm Pre is charging, the screen is on and showing the time.  The charge does seem to take longer than with a direct USB cable but I’m not 100% sure about that.  If you can get one, get it.

When a friend of mine told me about a great sushi place in Valencia, I was a little skeptical.  This restaurant is located in the Valencia Town Center, which is an upscale outside “mall” with movie theaters, restaurants and a bunch of other businesses. Who knew this place existed way out there.

There are “street” parking outside the restaurant or you can park in the parking structure and walk over. This restaurant does not look like your traditional Japanese restaurant, but instead looks more like any upscale restaurant with great lighting for ambiance. My friend tells me it can get really busy here so you may have to make reservations.

My friend tells me the hot food is great here but of course, we ordered the sushi.  We got an assortment which was prepared to perfection and about as fresh as possible. The chef prepares the sushi with ponzu and soy sauce so you just pop the pieces into your mouth where it will just melt away.

This was a wonderful discovery for me and will have to return for more of their delicious sushi here. The pricing here is a little high so don’t come here looking for bargains. Come here if you want to have some of the best sushi you can have in Los Angeles.

Maru
24250 Town Center Dr. #180
Valencia, CA 91355
(661) 290-2595
maruvalencia.com

Method 1: Keyboard
Hold down the Orange, “R” and “Sym” keys simultaneously.
I learned this method from the Sprint customer service when they were helping me transfer my old number over to my Palm.

Method 2: Power switch
Hold down the power switch and toggle the Ringer Switch (next to power switch) 3 times.  I’m not 100% sure but this method seems to turn off the unit immediately without saving anything, then booting up.

After crying myself to sleep on Saturday, I woke up to a text message on Sunday from a friend that told me that he was able to get a Pre at a Radio Shack downtown. What!? Sure enough, I called one and Jared tells me that they have one last Pre left. Why didn’t I think of this before? Unfortunately, the Lakers game was about to start so there was some traffic but I managed to get there in time to pick up my Pre.

As you can see, it’s a lot smaller than my Palm Pilot, which I still had from the 90’s. While I was buying my Pre at Radio Shack, no less than 2 people came in to buy one. Unfortunately, because of a previous identity theft problem, the first Sprint rep did not approve my account. Jared was nice enough to let me try again with the Sprint supervisor and after being asked about what company I worked for in the 80’s, I finally was able to open my account and buy my Pre.

This shot compares the size of the LG enV2 (my current phone) to the Palm Pre. As you can see, they are almost the same size.

My first impressions:
Some reviews are saying that the bottom of the phone is as sharp as a Katana. Although it is a little sharp, it’s not a deal breaker for me. Since I mostly text message, the keyboard is an important feature for me. Yes, the keys are pretty small and strangely sticky, but after 2 days, I’ve gotten used to the feel of it. However, keep in mind that I have small hands, so this may not be the case for you if you have large hands.

So far, the Sprint service is okay, although I only get 3 out of 5 bars at home, whereas I get 4 out of 4 bars with Verizon.

After using it for almost 2 days, I love the multi-tasking, iPhone like touch screen and combined IM/SMS messaging screen. The multi-tasking allows you keep all your applications running, like playing music. This is clearly one of the best features of the Pre. My LG couldn’t even make calls while I had the Navigation application going. With the Pre, when a call comes in when you are listening to music, the music will stop automatically. Then when you are done with your call, the music re-starts.

However, unlike music, if you are watching a video, it will pause when you switch applications. As for the sound, the speaker is on the back. So, although it is loud, it’s not as loud as my LG enV2 which has the speakers inside where the screen/keyboard is located.

So far, nothing has crashed but I have been able to get the contact screen to become blank. Cut and paste works but controlling the location of the cursor could be better with an iPhone type magnifier.

The turn by turn Navigation is better than the one from Verizon. The voice is easier to understand and the “ETA” is shown along with the remaining mileage.

The camera is pretty good for a phone and the flash is actually fairly bright. The images are certainly good enough for posting on myspace or using as wallpaper for the phone. There’s no video recording for the Pre yet. I’ve only used that feature once on my LG so that’s not very important for me.

After using it a lot for one day, the battery was below 10% by 7pm. This is with the screen bright, and WiFi on, but Bluetooth off. I’ll have to try it again but the level seems to go down pretty fast. This could be a problem.

There’s not really a lot of applications to download for the Pre (especially compared to the iPhone’s 35,000). What’s a little strange is you cannot queue multiple downloads. You’d think with the multi-tasking, they would let you at least queue the downloads.

Palm already released version 1.0.2 yesterday (Sunday), which I downloaded and installed. I’m not sure but I think it just adds an alarm clock and fixes some bugs.

After using the “Sync” feature, I got all my contacts from my google account into the phone. Actually, there were a lot of junk email addresses that I had to go in and manually delete. My facebook account is hardly used so I didn’t even bother syncing that with the phone.

The phone automatically backs up all your data once a day, which is a great feature. I had this feature with my Verizon account so I’m pleased that it is available with my Palm Pre.

So far so good. I’ll keep using it and reporting back here with any problems or thoughts.

Well, it’s June 6th and no Palm Pre for me. After finding out that my grease didn’t work, I tried going directly to the Sprint store and they put me on their waiting list.  I played with the demo unit at the Sprint store and the keyboard does feel sticky as the early reviews say, and the bottom of the unit is scary sharp and could easily cut cheese as the video shows.  I’m starting to have second thoughts about this unit.

In a desparate move, I even returned back to Radio Shack to see what they had to say again, and they too now had a waiting list so I got on that one too.

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.

I’ve been waiting patiently for the Palm Pre to come out for months now.  Is it an iPhone killer? I don’t know. It’s certainly not going to have the kind of 3rd party software that’s available right now for the iPhone.  One thing seems to be clear. This is probably Palm’s last chance to come back as a viable contender in the handheld marketplace.

Upon visiting Best Buy, I was told there was a very long waiting list and I probably wouldn’t get one on June 6th. After visiting Radio Shack, the guy there told me there was no waiting list because there would be no shortage. Huh?

A friend of mine tells me that her friend’s friend can get me one on the 6th but I’d have to grease some “palms.”  I’ve had marginal luck with these types of deals.  But desparate situations call for desparate measures, and so I gave the green light.  Either I’ll have one on the 6th or I might be on TV being led away in handcuffs by a Palm Pre sting operation.

In either case, I’ll be posting something here.

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.