Daily affirmations of a word mercenary
Tech agony
21Dec2007 Filed under: Geek OutI’m quite glad it’s the shortest day of the year (sunrise: 7:55 / sunset: 4:20 — Gaia says spark it up for the solstice, pagans!) because I am dealing with nothing but TECH WOES today.
My mom let her domain expire. Tech support at her old registrar is less than helpful. Progress is very, very slow.Resolved! That only took a week and 5 hours on the phone!- I simply don’t like my Blackberry Curve. So I’m returning it. Need to print out my return slip …
- Oops! Printer is out of four colors of ink ink. Go fetch ink. Get five right cartridges, one wrong cartridge. Of course even though that cartridge is yellow, I can’t print a black & white document when one cartridge is out. LAME!
I love my belove machines, but sometimes I get crabby at it all.
To celebrate solstice, perhaps I will go to bed at 5pm!
- Tags: internet, solstice, technology
11 Responses to “Tech agony”
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Hey there. I'm Ariel Meadow Stallings, a native Seattleite who's written my way up and down the Left Coast. Electrolicious is where I post daily randomata, but I also write for a living. My first book, Offbeat Bride, was published last year.
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Lara
December 21st, 2007 at 1:27 pm
Why are you returning the Curve? I JUST got one and it’s been a little hard to get used to… Are you going back to a Sidekick?
Ariel
December 21st, 2007 at 2:39 pm
Why I’m returning my Blackberry Curve:
1. Keypad is too small and poorly thought-out (two keys to get a period or a comma or an @ symbol? WTF?!)
2. Trackball sucks (too small and feels bad under the thumb — pointy and plasticky)
3. UI is too ugly and unfriendly (menus are heinous, all system fonts are awful, and not enough jump keys between applications)
4. Web browser is clunky (what is this, 1999? seriously, you have not seen ugliness until you’ve browsed the web with bberry.)
5. Given all these issues, it’s too expensive
I’m thinking about replacing it with a Tmobile Dash (way cheaper, nicer UI, better browser, gmail imap) or just sticking with my Sidekick (old, but supremely usable — I can type without looking!).
This has been a really interesting process, actually. I think it’s going to end up costing me some $$ (yeah, I can return the blackberry, but there’s the cost of shipping both ways, and a “restocking fee” which will probably be a bit), but it was interesting to try what’s supposedly one of the best phones out there and come away disappointed.
And GAH, yes, I know EVERYONE thinks I should get an iPhone. I’m not interested right now, for reasons I outlined here.
Tracey
December 21st, 2007 at 5:19 pm
Funny that you are thinking about getting a Dash. I got a dash and after seeing your post, was second guessing my choice. The Dash, as far as I can tell, is not GPS enabled, or rather you have to buy an expensive bluetooth unit for GPS. The web browser is “sorta” clunky, or maybe I’m just picky. I prefer Firefox and get frustrated easily. And, the keys are small and it’s kind of annoying when the Dash doesn’t “guess” that I want to type numbers and not letters, so you have to hold the alt key, blah de blah…
I really wanted to get a Wing but the place I bought it from did not have them in stock and I was impatient. I was actually out tonight to see if I could return the Dash and get a Wing since I’m still in my 14 day window….I can, but the hassle is just enough for me to stick with what I have. Which, after all, is still pretty good - I do like how easily you can sync the Dash and Mobile Office rocks!
Rachel
December 21st, 2007 at 9:47 pm
when things seem hectic just channel this guys joy!
ellie
December 21st, 2007 at 10:23 pm
Dood, was wondering what happened to the sacredgroves website, it just went poof. Was trying to check in on a retreat in the Spring.
Ariel v.
December 21st, 2007 at 10:34 pm
The Dash is great, but has that same punctuation problem on the keyboard. Sheesh. I’m glad you decided, that Blackberry was pissing you off!
Ariel
December 22nd, 2007 at 11:07 am
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.
Christine
December 23rd, 2007 at 1:29 pm
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.
Sarah
December 25th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
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!
Nick Starr
December 26th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
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.
Ariel
December 26th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
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.