Friday, September 26, 2003

So far, the hunt for the elusive Palm Tungsten E pda has come up empty. Called all the local stores and everyone is cluesless. I still hope something will materialize by next Wednesday's official launch.

My couple of days of roving Wi-Fi was a success. I did try to find the free Wi-Fi in the Bethesda Ave area but there was nothing that I could find.

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

Due to the Isabel blackout this week, I've been testing the waters of roaming Wi-Fi. Yesterday, still without power since 9/18, I bit the bullet and bought a t-mobile day pass ($10) which is good for 24 hours. While I believe t-mobile's pricing is too high for the casual user I thought this as good a time as any to try it. Even though I got power back at 1 am today (9/24), I didn't have any food in house so I thought I'd keep up my wi-fi test and travel to another Starbucks for breakfast this morning and use some more of my day pass. After I leave my present location (Starbucks, Chevy Chase Lakes), I am headed to Bethesda Ave to try out the rumored free Wi-Fi at that location. My day pass runs out at 2 pm today.

As usual, the marketers have missed an opportunity. Business news reports have said the t-mobile subscriber rates have been very slow for their hotspots. This says that they have a poor pricing model. I already pay $60 a month to Comcast for cable internet and have a wi-fi rig in my house. I'm not going to pay another premium for the occasional starbucks wi-fi connection. Starbucks should offer a deal with a latte purchase of maybe $2 or $3 dollars extra for some wi-fi access. The $6 minimum for one hour of access is just not compelling unless you are desperate.

I'm also on the hunt for a new PDA. Palm is releasing a couple of hot new pda's on 10/1. I'm interested in the Tungsten E which will retail for $199. I went to Office Depot and CompUSA and both were clueless. I am anxious to nail this one down since I expect to sell out quickly. We'll see.

Got my new Dell 19" LCD for my upstairs pc rig on Monday. Of course no power, but I set it up and it looks real nice. I'll get a chance to use it this afternoon when I get home.

Wednesday, September 17, 2003

Been a while since I blogged.

I visited my brand new Starbucks that just opened last Saturday. I've been anticipating this for over a year. Yay!

I'll be walking to the Starbucks which should do wonders for my exercise.

I will also be checking out the free Wireless day sponsored by Intel. It will be fun to check this out with my new Dell Centrino laptop next Thursday.

Ordered the new Sonar 3 Producer today. Should ship in October. The new interface looks slick.

Hurricane Isabel dominates the news. My Mom has been calling me daily with things I should do to prepare. I am kind of indifferent. I think the MEDIA has overhyped this one. We'll see.

Received the Kensington LCD desktop monitor arm. Small issues with install but it works great and frees up my desk space. I can now also rotate my monitor 90 degrees and work in portrait mode. I set up some hotkeys in the Nvidia desktop manager to toggle between portrait and landscape. Very cool.

Ordered a new Dell 19 inch LCD for my den PC. Got a very good price - $490. This will replace the now 10 year old NEC tube monitor that is showing it's age. I may upgrade my video in this PC from the built in motherboard to an Nvidia or ATI.