guttervomit

5

HP 6500 Mobile Messenger (1 of 2)

19 Sep 2005

Well, it’s been 3 days since I got the 6500 and I think I’ve gotten used to it enough to right an objective review. (Normally, writing a review off of the first few hours with a new gadget tends to skew your observations a certain way: it magnifies the good stuff and the bad stuff such that all else tends to fade into the background.)

Right so, here it is again, in case you didn’t see it in the previous post, and are too lazy to scroll down:

I’ll just run through the specifications really quickly for reference (you can read it in geek-level detail here). HP’s 6500 Mobile Messenger series runs Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition, has a 312MHz processor and a total of 128mb of memory. Connectivity includes Bluetooth, GSM, GPS (!), GPRS, EVDO and IR (but no Wi-Fi, ugh), and it accepts both SDIO and mini-SD cards via two separate expansion slots.

As you can see from the picture, the thumbboard is built right in to the unit. It doesn’t detach like with the older 6300 series models, nor does it slide away like with the XDA IIs. Its form factor is essentially like a Treo without the antenna. (You can check out the size comparison here.)

APPEARANCE

I actually came up with a short list of Must-Know Things about the 6500, which anybody who is vaguely interested in getting it should be aware of.

Here’s the first one:

1. The 6500 isn’t the most beautiful gadget you or I have ever seen. It’s got that silver-gray functional look that HP uses on all of its business-solution-type products. It’s not shiny or elegant or particularly eye-catching. Apart from being fairly expensive, there is nothing about this phone that will draw much attention to you when you use it in a crowded cafe.

Speaking of appearance, it’s important to note that the picture above isn’t entirely accurate — it’s a marketing image, so they didn’t include the plastic visor that protects the screen. The only reason why I mention it is because I happen to find that visor fairly annoying. For one thing, it’s chintzy as hell. It makes a little snapping sound every time you flip it up or down, and obviously it blocks you from using the stylus on the screen whenever it’s closed. Now, you could choose to pop it off if it really bugs you; the visor isn’t really fixed on to the housing. Personally, I’m still busy trying to decide if I can’t get used to it enough to just keep it on — I don’t really excel at keeping my stuff unblemished and I have a feeling this visor is going to come in handy the next time I accidentally slip the phone into my pocket alongside my keys and spare change.

Weight-wise, this thing is heavier than a 20gb iPod (165 grams vs. the iPod’s 158), a bit lighter than the Treo 650 (178g) and a lot lighter than the O2 XDA IIs (210g). Make no mistake though: you are definitely going to feel this thing in your pocket.

EXPERIENCE

I guess it’s a testament to the iPAQ’s maturity as a device that setting it up was such a no-brainer. I was able to insert my SIM card, boot the device and configure the necessaries right on the counter of the store where I bought it, in about 2 minutes. GSM and GPRS are configured automatically (as long as you’ve already activated the relevant services with your network) and pretty much the only thing left to do is load it up with your software.

Which brings me to the second Must-Know Thing about this device:

2. A lot of current PocketPC software won’t work with it. This is primarily for two reasons. The first is that few apps have been designed with a screen resolution of 240×240 in mind (none of the games I tried to install could be viewed properly because of the missing 80 pixels). Add that to the fact that the 6500 sports the Second Edition of Windows Mobile 2003 and you’ve got some major compatibility issues. I couldn’t even find a proper Theme Generator for it on the Microsoft site (they were all either WinMo 2002, or Smartphone-only).

Suffice to say that in terms of software addons, you lose quite a bit of flexibility with this device. Fortunately, the single most important PPC app in my collection, Microsoft Voice Command, is completely resolution-independent, so the screen-res didn’t bother me quite as much. (Voice Command is, btw, the first MS app since Reader that has truly impressed me. If this is where MS is taking us with Vista, I’m packing my bags right now.)

[ continued tomorrow: more experiences, and some bugs ]

Posted in Hardware | 5 Comments »
0

Random Quotes

19 Sep 2005

"You tell someone you cheated if you want to break up with them. Otherwise, it’s just a selfish way to get rid of guilt."

- Vincent Chase, from the HBO series Entourage
(thanks, mocca!)

Posted in Randomness | No Comments »
2

Going Legit: Ugh.

17 Sep 2005

I’m depressed/happy/depressed this weekend, and because the first "depressed" part occurred prior to the "happy" part, or the second "depressed" part, I’ll talk about that first.

Basically, we’ve decided not to do the office thing this year. We’re (loosely) shooting for mid-April to early-May instead. Our primary reasons are 1) lack of time and 2) lack of money … which is pretty much everything in the service industry so there you go.

The "lack of time" bit was particularly painful to me because I was willing to put everything I had on the line for this plan, up to and including every available waking moment of my life for the next 6 months. Unfortunately, "willing" and "able" are not necessarily the same thing and if I actually wanted us to earn anything over the next 2 quarters, I needed to actually be able to work as well.

"Lack of money" meanwhile, is pretty relative. We could get the necessary capital together if it came down to that, but it’d put us a little bit too close to the red to be comfortable.

So that’s it in a nutshell. I told mocca that I’d rather wait 7 or 8 months and do this right, than to proceed as planned in october and end up doing everything half-baked, for the reasons stated above.

Right, so about that "happy" part: I bought myself a pocket pc phone yesterday! This one here, an HP 6500 Mobile Messenger:

I was able to find a shop (in Shangrila Plaza, of all places) that was offering it with a 12-month installment plan, so I only ended up paying about a fourth of the price up front.

So that made me happy. Almost instantly, in fact.

However, a couple of hours into my first day with this beauty, I got all depressed again. It turns out that some of the units that HP shipped have bum cradles, and because the cosmos has it in for me this weekend, I was one of the unlucky few to get these suckers.

Fortunately, I can still sync up with my computer over Bluetooth (or IR or GPRS or EVDO), so the cradle issue is really more of an annoyance. I’ll probably still try to have it replaced though, if only as a matter of principle.

More on this in a couple of days — it’s an interesting enough piece of hardware to warrant its own review, so I’ll probably devote an afternoon to writing one up next week.

Posted in Goin' Legit | 2 Comments »
1

Capsule Reviews, September 2005

15 Sep 2005

Augustana, All the Stars and Boulevards
From the five or six tracks I’ve listened to, these guys come across as a kind of blender full of Keane and Counting Crows. Cute and guaranteed to get your girlfriend interested, the problem with these guys is that they don’t really have the gravitas that a songwriter like Adam Duritz can embue his music with. In many ways, they remind me of a less-capable Sleeping at Last or The Velvet Teen, both of which are better buys if you’re looking for modern emo done right.

Trapt, Someone in Control
Trapt is one of those bands whose songs were so brutally overplayed on the radio or on TV that they began to feel a lot less powerful than they actually were, as if repeated playing somehow diminished them. Their new album, Someone in Control, has Trapt amassing an altogether heavier sound than their previous works. There’s no "These Walls" in this collection, but there’s plenty of stuff for folks who liked "Headstrong" or "Echo" (the carrier single, "Stand Up", sets the stage for this bigger, badder Trapt). Not bad, but nothing spectacular.

Coheed & Cambria, Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV
Claudio Sanchez discovers acoustic guitar. Film at 11. This is the album I’ve been waiting for the past couple of months, and it deserves a bit more than a capsule review I think. Fanboys will definitely like the first track "Keeping the Blade" though.

Posted in Music | 1 Comment »
1

Under Construction

15 Sep 2005

I’m fiddling around with Apache and mod_rewrite again, so you might come across some anomalies around this site over the next 24 hours or so. The front page will work no matter what, but since most of the improvements I’m making have something to do with guttervomit’s archiving system, expect weirdness when you view the older stuff.

Posted in Randomness | 1 Comment »
0

Microsoft Codename Max

15 Sep 2005

The folks at MS released a new photo-sharing thingamjig 2 days ago, which they are rather enigmatically referring to as "Codename Max." Although the product itself is fairly sparse (it doesn’t hold a candle to say, Picasa 2), it does show off two future technologies that will be making their mainstream debut in Windows Vista. The first is Avalon, which is the new Windows graphics engine that they’ve been developing for the past 2 years or so. I’m actually a bit hazy on what Avalon is supposed to be capable of, because as far as I can tell, Max wasn’t doing anything that you don’t already see in current applications like Picasa. (There was one interesting feature that would layout your photos within a 3d space, complete with a bit of perspective and raytracing, but I assume there should be more to it than that.)

The second technology is Indigo, which is tricky to explain because I don’t even grasp it completely myself yet. Indigo is a communication framework for sending messages back and forth between independent systems, kinda like the way P2P is a framework for sending files between users’ individual machines. It’s not something that a particular user will really ever deal directly with, but if it does its job right, you will know that it’s there.

Meanwhile, Max itself is interesting insofar as it is a preview of what Windows applications will look like in (late) 2006, i.e., they’ll look a lot like OSX. As expected, the fucking thing is a resource hog like no other. On my 2.8GHz P4 with 1gb of RAM and a 128mb graphics card, I couldn’t run Max and Photoshop at the same time without one of them freezing up on me. It has a memory footprint of about 150mb while running, and yes, it does actually use your 3d graphics card. To be fair, the documentation did say that this was "only temporary while we improve Max to run faster."

I haven’t been able to try the "sharing" part of this photo-sharing tool because I didn’t know anyone who’d be willing to download all the components just to try it out with me, so this isn’t really much of a software review. Suffice to say that, as expected, none of the current PCs will be able to run Windows Vista without undergoing some major upgrades. (According to TWiT, Microsoft is recommending 2GB(!) of RAM to make the most of Vista’s 64-bit edition. Yowza.) It will all look quite pretty though.

Posted in Software | No Comments »
0

EBay > Skype

13 Sep 2005

I don’t know how I missed this doozy of a newsbite yesterday, but apparently, e-commerce giant Ebay has bought soft-VoIP maven Skype for a hefty US$2.6billion. Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, Skype’s founders (who incidentally, cut their proverbial teeth back in 2001 when they released Kazaa), are literally awash with cash.

What’s weird about this acquisition is that Ebay isn’t exactly who you would be expecting to buy the seemingly-unrelated Skype, although in my mind, it was only a matter of time before someone did. Zennstrom and Friis are just so hot right now, it seems. Still, Skype’s revenue is tiny compared with what they are being bought for (they’re pegging their year-end revenue to be at US$60 million, with 2006 forecasted to US$200 million).

Ebay is one of the few players online that has the available bankroll to do something this bold, and obviously they are banking on expanding in a big way with this new addition to their catalogue.

And of course, this wouldn’t be much of a speculation if I don’t throw in some thoughts on how this all affects Google, because there’s practically nothing that goes on online these days that doesn’t directly/indirectly trackback to the search giant. There’s already been some theories as to what Google is planning with their upcoming payment system, Google Wallet, and if they really are going to go over-the-top vs. the Ebay/Paypal combo, then the Skype acquisition suddenly makes a bit more sense. Why? Because Google is stepping into Ebay’s territory with Wallet. So now, Ebay is stepping into Google’s, or rather Google Talk’s, territory with Skype.

But if that’s true, then Ebay’s maneuverings are simply responses to the pressure Google is promising with Wallet. But where Google’s expansion into the personal information management and productivity arenas make a lot of sense, Ebay’s expansion into voice communication seems like they are jumping farther and faster than anyone can really "get" right now.

Posted in Acquisitions | No Comments »
0

Moto Razr: Maria Sharapova Edition

13 Sep 2005

Ok, now that’s just silly.

Posted in Hardware | No Comments »
1

Going Legit: Angry Client #3

12 Sep 2005

Our little office adventure has stalled for the time being while we wait for a little more money to come in and pad our downward spiral into bankrupcy a bit.

My current workload is back to its usual inhuman levels (due in part to the fact that I took 3 Whole Days Off during the weekend, which was my first break in over 2 months). This morning, I got an angry SMS from a client reminding me of my commitments to their company, and how they expected me to get back to them "within the day … not tomorrow, or the day after. Today."

My reply was a real killer: "I’m sorry, but I don’t have your number stored in my phone book. May I know who this is?"

… Which was the truth btw, so I wasn’t just being an asshole.

Of course, I actually had a fairly good idea who it was, but I wasn’t about to start apologizing to someone that I wasn’t 100% certain actually deserved the effort.

On hindsight, it might have been a better move to simply have called the person up and guessed who it was from the voice, but I was feeling particularly on-edge this morning, and didn’t feel like talking through gritted teeth. In any case, after the client had confirmed their identity (and I had ascertained that I had indeed fallen somewhat short of their expectations), I still didn’t bother apologizing. That’s just my personal policy with angry clients, i.e., "Go ahead and rant all you want, but if you expect me to say "I’m sorry" just because I’m afraid to lose you as a client, you can go fuck yourself."

Which, in a nutshell, is why I’m not a salesperson.

What’s very interesting about all this is that this is actually my third angry client this year, which is indicative of just how flippant/self-centered/downright offensive I can be. I should mention though, that it’s always the smaller clients that get pissed off at me, so that says a lot about how greedy I am as well. Flippant, self-centered, offensive and greedy. That’s me.

(The flipside to that view, of course, is that it is simply wrong to allot each client the same amount of time and effort, because they are not all paying you equally. For small clients, that usually means you get a tenth of the attention that we give to major clients, but hell, you get what you pay for, you know?)

After a few more exchanges (during which I valiantly refrained from saying any of the stuff I wrote out above), we were able to reach a point of agreement and the negotiations were able to draw to a peaceful close. I was actually supposed to swing by their office and pick up a check tomorrow, but I guess I should steer clear for the next couple of days :/

Posted in Goin' Legit | 1 Comment »
0

Out

8 Sep 2005

I’m taking the day off on Friday, after working 7 days a week for the past 2 months. I’ve already told our clients not to bother calling/emailing/instant-messaging me, because I won’t be replying until Monday. It’s not that I actually have anything nice planned out — I’m mostly just doing it so I won’t be under pressure for at least 24 hours straight. Oh, what a treat.

Posted in Goin' Legit | No Comments »