Open Sources | Rodrigues & Urlocker » TAG: Product Review

February 18, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Replacing my Treo 650

TAGS: Product Review

I've been living with my Treo 650 for quite a few years. It's been a workhorse, but frankly, it's on a slow road to the glue factory. When I first got this phone it was state-of-the-art. In fact, it was the only smartphone available. I've been a Palm user since the original Palm Pilot back in 1996. I upgraded various models along the way, including the Palm III, Sony Cleo, Treo 600 among others. But updates from Palm were always slow; in recent years, they've become absolutely glacial.

Let's face it, Palm lost the plot a few years back. They spread themselves too thin. They failed to keep the OS up-to-date. And they got their clock cleaned by the Blackberry and more recently the iPhone. Palm invented the category of the smartphone but failed to stay relevent. No wonder Palm ranks last in a survey of customer satisfaction.

Maybe my Treo 650 has been dropped too many times and now the quality of voice connections is just too crappy. Some of the buttons have now become intermittent, so it's sometimes hard to turn the phone on or off. And there's a gaping crack in the seam between the front plate and the back that makes me nervous. In some ways, it's a testament to the quality of the Treo that I'm still using this phone after four years. Just about every other Treo user I know has moved on.

There's things I absolutely love about the Treo 650 and there's things that drive me nuts. Here's the quick rundown:

Pros:
-Its a GSM tri-band phone, and works pretty much anywhere in the world
-It's got a very good keyboard
-It's got good email (I use Snapfish)
-It's got a simple but effective calendar and contacts
-It's got a decent display
-The user interface is simple; not a lot of excess clicking
-There are plenty of third party applications (I use RunnersLog to track my running.)
-Battery life is decent (5 hours talk time) and you you can swap it out for a spare
-Syncing with windows outlook is pretty easy (though sometimes everything gets duplicated)

Cons:
-It's bulky (4.4" x 2.3 x .90) and heavy (6.3 oz)
-It's got this big stub of an antenna
-It doesn't fit into my pants pocket, so I use a clip on case that unclips anytime I bend down to pick something up or get into my car
-The voice quality is lousy; I've taken to using a headset all the time
-Speaker phone not very good
-The bluetooth connectivity is flakey and doesn't always work
-Web browsing is so slow as to be useless (though I will use Google when desparate)
-The camera is awful

So here's my requirements list for a new phone:
-Must be GSM tri-band
-Must have better voice quality
-Must weigh 4 oz or less
-Must be pocketable (smaller than the Treo 650)
-Must have a QWERTY keyboard I can type on
-Must have good email
-Must have a decent calendar
-4 hours or more of talk time

Optional requirements:
-3G support for faster browsing
-Built-in camera that is not completely useless
-Decent speaker phone

If anyone has made the switch from Treo 650 to something else, let me know how it went. Meanwhile I keep hoping to see if Apple's former "podfather" Jon Rubenstein can have a positive impact on Palm. And maybe the long-rumored GSM version of the Palm Centro will make its way to AT&T in the next week. Alternatively, maybe I just wait for something cool like the newly unveiled Sony Ericsson X1.

Posted by Zack Urlocker on February 18, 2008 08:53 AM

February 13, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Why do cell phones suck so much?

TAGS: Product Review

On a recent Saturday night my wife and I went out shopping for cell phones. (I know, I know, doesn't sound like much of a date.) I'm going to replace my Treo 650 and my wife wants to replace her Motorola RAZR with something that's easier for texting.

We stopped by the local AT&T store to see what's on offer. (Although my wife's on Verizon.) Lots of choices but still pretty frustrating. There are phones that have 3G GSM and Wifi (but weigh too much) there are phones that have a great user interface (but no keyboard) there are phones that have a camera (but no wifi or vice verse) and phones that have all the right features but you'd never be able to figure them out.

I got to wondering a very basic question: why do cell phones suck so much? My thesis is that they suck because they've been designed by committees. I tried out several Windows Mobile 6 phones and they just seem to have the user interface wrong. Maybe I'm too used to the Palm Treo at this point to switch. But should it really take so many clicks to send a message? And why do I give up so much screen real estate for fancy windows borders, buttons? You get the feeling that the user interface is designed by someone who has no idea what the underlying hardware will be. And of course, that is how it's designed. So while there are lots of good Windows Mobile phones (AT&T Tilt, Samsung BlackJack II, Samsung I760 among others), they never feel like the software is designed for the hardware. More of a one-size-fits-none solution. Maybe I could get used to the user interface, but it's not always obvious how to do even basic tasks. You've got to guess your way through menus and options and I found myself unable to get back to where I started without going back to the Windows menu.

It's worth contrasting that experience with the iPhone. You can pick up an iPhone and figure it out in a couple of minutes. It works the way you would expect it to work. I don't know if this is because Steve Jobs is a relentless micromanager sweating every detail of the user interface. But that's my guess. And if it isn't Jobs doing it, he's instilled a culture that cares deeply about these things. (And that's pretty much the way things were at Palm and why I love the Treo user interface.)

I'm not saying it's easy to design a smartphone; it's the embodiment of deeply conflicting user interfaces and objectives. You've got to balance things like phone usage, battery life, screensize along with interfaces for a range of applications like email, text messages, web browsing and calendars. Not an easy task.

I think in the end it all boils down to a couple of things. If you want a good product, have a small team that cares deeply about the experience. It's worth sweating the details.

Maybe that's the reason Microsoft bought Danger...

Posted by Zack Urlocker on February 13, 2008 09:31 AM

June 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Webware 100 vs. PC World 25 Web Sites to Watch

TAGS: Product Review

Where the hell did all these Web 2.0 companies come from? I am flabbergasted by the sheer volume. Anyway, today appears to be the day of Web 2.0 rollups.

Webware 100-The category distinction makes it easy to figure out if you have any interest in these sites. The likely answer is you sort of do, but you will lose interest quickly.

PC World 25 Web Sites to Watch--same deal, just not represented in one page and therefore made me even more confused.

I can't figure out how the majority of these sites will make money, but who cares...onto some fun graphs from Swivel. Please enjoy this graph by some guy who counts his Linux commands.



And how could we not enjoy this Bird Flu Death Chart?

Posted by Dave Rosenberg on June 18, 2007 10:13 PM

June 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Deep insight into Dell sales process

TAGS: Product Review

Consumerist is running a great piece "22 Confessions Of A Former Dell Sales Manager" that proves you're not crazy for thinking Dell pricing is arbitrary and random. We used to play a game at GLC where I would make everyone try and order the same item going down the SMB, Home, and Mid-size business to see who would get the best price. In the long run the best pricing always came from the Dell reps.

Not surprisingly, Dell has asked for them to remove the post.

Posted by Dave Rosenberg on June 17, 2007 11:32 AM

April 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Off-topic: Craigslist is much better than eBay

TAGS: Product Review

At least for what I sold. I put my wife's road bike up for sale on Saturday, and by noon Monday had sold it. On eBay it was still at $250 (a fraction of its price) with six days left in the bidding process. It's possible that I would have ended up getting more by selling through eBay, but I liked selling to someone local. Who wants to be bothered with shipping off an item (especially a road bike?).

Anyway, this experience has made a Craigslist believer out of me. Maybe I'll start selling Alfresco software through it. Oh, wait - Sourceforge already has it for free. :-)

Posted by Matt Asay on April 30, 2007 12:07 PM

March 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Sync iCal with Google Calendar (SpanningSync is great so far)

TAGS: Applications, Product Review

In my initial posting on Google Apps Premier I noted that sync was the one thing that it lacked for *real* enterprise adoption. The fine fellows at SpanningSync solved the problem (at least on the Mac for $25/year) and I can now say that Google Apps will likely be our corporate email and calendaring within the next few weeks. For $75/user/year ($50/google and $25/spanningsync) you have 10GB of email, shared calendar, Sync and whatever other goodies Google drops on you. Just over $6/user/month is well worth it to know all your data is available. I do find it odd that 3rd parties figured out how to do the sync part before Google did...or maybe they weren't interested?

On the one hand I am terrified of lockin, and on the other hand I think that we have way too many services that we depend on too widely disparate. I am sure that Google will have some kind of meltdown sooner or later, but they will still be better than normal users will be about backups and archiving.

Right now we use Zimbra@Maccius for calendar, Rackspace for email and web hosting and we are just bringing up Contegix to host the Mule project stuff along with some new features. It's just too much.

The funny thing is that my staff is willing to deal with the random Google issue just to get the Gmail interface. It just proves that apps still matter way more than operating systems. It also proves the power of the Google brand.

Posted by Dave Rosenberg on March 24, 2007 11:20 AM

March 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Managing customer support (37 Signals Highrise)

TAGS: Product Review

37Signals today launched Highrise, a new take on contact management. My initial reaction was that I didn't quite understand the practical purpose until I started thinking about using Highrise in conjunction with something like Salesforce.com or SugarCRM to manage customer cases beyond initial creation. Highrise has a very logical interface that forces you (or your staff) to address tasks and cases as they relate to the unique individual or company. Oddly, none of the systems that we have tried enforce this behavior. And while I am not sure that Highrise will work either it's an interesting new way to meet the need.

Somehow despite all the investment that software vendors and end-users have made, customer support remains a difficult beast. I have written about managing and designing support teams in the past but I still feel like there is a bit of mystery. And as many open source companies base their business models on support subscriptions it would seem logical that anyone would have come up with a complete solution, but it's yet to happen (that I know of).

I know of several companies that use case management in Salesforce or Sugar and quite a few who use JIRA (which despite the fact that it has no notion of a "customer" with parent/child relationships is by far the best system for tracking bugs and managing cases)--except that you have to integrate it with Salesforce or Sugar for it to really be locked-in with the customer master.

It seems to me that if the features from Highrise were built into Salesforce or Sugar they could open up whole new markets specifically for support. The alternative would be to use the APIs for Highrise and integrate with SF.com or Sugar...but how many systems do we really need to run a theoretically simple business?

Posted by Dave Rosenberg on March 20, 2007 09:07 PM

March 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Open Source Telephony works just fine (Asterisk)

TAGS: Product Review

I read this article "Doubts persist about open source IP telephony" as I was sitting on a conference call using a Polycom phone on our brand new Asterisk system. We deployed last week and I have to say it's been a pleasure thus far. The only issue I see is that its not that much less expensive than proprietary systems. You can however do lots of cool stuff that you can't do otherwise.

At my last job we went with the 3Com NBX, which was mostly good--with the exception of the fact that the switches would go a bit nuts sometimes and broadcast themselves to death. So far, so good with the Asterisk stuff.

Although he thinks open source telephony is an "up and coming" technology, Cataldo's attitude remains one of caution. "Until we do a lot of homework, we're not just going to throw it on our tech stack," he said.

It's odd to me that analysts think that OSS IP telephony is any less mature than proprietary IP telephony--it's such a new industry I would argue that the OSS stuff has been tested much more and been through far more scenarios that proprietary tools.

Posted by Dave Rosenberg on March 18, 2007 06:06 PM

March 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Review: Getting the most battery life on long flights

TAGS: Product Review

I fly internationally at least once per quarter, and have done so for nearly three years. As such, I've long needed a way to get enough battery life to sustain me during 8-12 hours of flight time. I've seen others try to make do by buying 1-3 extra laptop batteries of whatever kind is standard to their laptop. I always carry an extra battery of this sort, but it's not a good solution for long-haul flights.

In the past, therefore, I always used the Electrovaya PowerPad 160, which Brad Kuhn of the Free Software Foundation recommended to me back in 2003 at the eGovOS Conference.

It was a great recommendation: I got roughly seven to ten hours of uptime, depending on what I was doing. (If watching DVDs, battery life was closer to seven hours; if working on email/Office applications, I got closer to ten and sometimes more.)

The PowerPad 160 is not cheap ($369 at current discount on the site), nor is it light (2.4 lbs.), but its shape (quite thin - I would just slip it into my laptop bag behind my laptop and then into the seat pocket in front of me on a flight) makes it very usable. Given that some of my most productive work time is when I'm unplugged from email and IM distractions, it's money well spent.

Unfortunately, the PowerPad 160 is not compatible with my current laptop, a MacBook Pro. It works fine with just about everything else, but Apple's MacBook line has a cool magnetic AC adaptor that doesn't work with the PowerPad (yet). So I had to find something else.

So far as I could find, there is only one extended battery option for the MacBook Pro, and it's a great one. Battery Geek's Portable Power Station. I just started using it yesterday, and the battery life is phenomenal. I ran it for ten hours with iTunes running, which would have finished the PowerPad 160 in seven hours or so.

(Note: Battery Geek's website claims it will run for six hours, but it does much, much better than that. I asked their customer service representative why the number isn't higher on the website, and he said only because they have not extensively tested battery life yet and so they didn't want to put too high of a number on the web. So, trust me instead: this battery will go...and go...and go.)

Its form factor is not as convenient as the PowerPad (Battery Geek's Portable Power Station is bulky, though not as wide/tall). And it's a bit more expensive ($449 for the highest-end battery) and two pounds heavier than the PowerPad 160 (4.4 lbs.). Plus, it's slightly more complex to use, as you have to set the voltage you want (which means you need to know the voltage you need - this can be found on the bottom of your laptop, of course, but it would be better for most people to not have to worry about knowing this sort of thing), while the PowerPad is simply a matter of plugging it in and away you go.

That said, so far as I know, the PowerPad can't be used with mobile phones and what not, whereas the Portable Power Station comes with a huge array of connectors for every laptop under the sun, and allows you to plug in a mobile USB connector to power these devices, too.

Both will work with a wide range of laptops, but the Portable Power Station is the only extended battery that will work with an Apple MacBook.

My verdict? If you ever fly internationally, you need one of these batteries. Both are great and will serve you well, keeping you productive (or not :-) while in the air. The Portable Power Station will serve you longer and on your MacBook, if that's what you have. But you can't go wrong with either battery.

Posted by Matt Asay on March 17, 2007 06:22 AM