Comments on: Tech agony

By: Ariel

Ariel — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 23:46:19 +0000

Yeah, I know about the double space/period thing — and it always bugged me, as standard editorial style is single space after a period. Also, what if I’m texting someone a website and I want to do bla.com? alt-m-period. BLAH!

Same is true with the @ symbol — I use it a lot in non email contexts (ie “running late, meet me @ corner?”) and so automatically showing the symbol in the email fields doesn’t help me 3/4 of the time I want to use it.

By: Nick Starr

Nick Starr — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 23:41:59 +0000

Regarding point one…the 1: The Blackberry (and now the iPhone) use the double space to insert a period, thus leaving an extra key available on the limited keyboard. On the blackberry the same is true for the @ symbol in known email fields, press and the @ symbol shows up in the appropriate space.

I too was a long term SK user, having every model from the Sidekick 1 B&W all the way thru the current line. I also have had every Blackberry from the 7290 series on up, and am currently using my iPhone.

I think the best phone I’ve ever used is the Curve. The iPhone is a great second don’t get me wrong, but for as much texting and emailing that I do, the Curve wins hands down…plus it feels great in your hand.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 19:57:36 +0000

i figured a tech post reviewing a product might be a good place for me to post my mac question to you…. i’m floating around the idea of getting a new computer - a mac laptop, and noticed a macbook (?) floating around your house in some of your posted pics.

i’m just wondering what specs you settled on, and how you feel about it - plusses, minuses. as someone with limited tech experience, who intends to use the thing mostly for word processing, publishing stuff and photos.i thought i’d ask you for a review (as i know you’re probably doing a lot of the first two on the machine, and seem to know your way around computer stuff)

my friends who have macs are either really into gaming and music or video making…. which i’m not so interested in, so their reviews touch more on bells and whistles i don’t know if i’d get to using.

anyway, if you’ve got general mac purchasing and using advice of any kind, it’d be appreciated!

By: Christine

Christine — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 20:29:30 +0000

Dash isn’t two keys for “!” and “@”, you simply hold down the keys that show those symbols for an extended period and those characters appear. Same for all the “blue” characters on the keyboard, giving you one key access to such luxuries as parens, dashes, slashes, ?, colons and semis, pipes and &. The Dash rocks and integration with MS mail,e etc. is lovely.

By: Ariel

Ariel — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 18:07:12 +0000

Re: the Dash:

• It might not have GPS, but if you install Google Maps Mobile, it triangulates your location based on cell phone towers. It’s amazing!
• The browser might not be firefox, but it’s a hell of a lot nicer than the blackberry. The Dash feels like smooth beautiful web butter compared to the heinously ugly rendering of pages on the Curve. I really should have taken a photo comparing how my sidekick, the dash, and the blackberry render, say, Flickr’s mobile site.
• As for the keypad, the dash might be two-keys for the @ and !, but it’s single key for periods and commas, which are huge for me.

Honestly, having been on the blackberry for 10 days, being back on my sidekick feels like sweet, sweet heaven. Yes, there’s going to be a learning curve for any new phone, but on the Blackberry it felt like I was regressing … that operating system! Seriously. There’s simply no excuse. I’ve got a Dash through work for a couple weeks, and I’m going to play with it and see if it’s worth switching. My biggest concern right now is that there doesn’t appear to be a “delete all messages” function for email, which I definitely need.