April 27th, 2008, 30 Comments »
Three years ago (almost to the day), I asked you, my dear readers, what cell phone I should buy:
I own the Honda Civic of cell phones. It works fine, and doesn’t break when I drop it. I rarely use my phone–I may go a whole week without making or receiving a call on it.
I bought the very ordinary Sony Ericsson Z600. It’s been fine, but I need to move up.
The biggest new requirement is that I need to send and receive email. So the input mechanism–keyboard, stylus, touch screen, whatever, needs to work well.
Everything else is negotiable. I don’t plan to record video with my phone, and I’ll take whatever still camera comes with the thing.
I could get an iPhone, I guess, but I really don’t want to spend any time hacking the thing to make it work in Canada. If setup and maintenance is pain-free, it’s an option.
So, what mobile solution would you recommend? Blackberry? Just to be clear, under no circumstances will I be wearing this thing on my hip, so smaller is better.
On a related note, should I stick with Fido? Do all mobility providers suck equally? Does anybody offer a real edge in data plans?
I’m tres ignorant on all things mobile, so I’ll take any advice you can offer.
UPDATE: I visited this page from Rogers Wireless in both Safari and Firefox on my MacBook. They get a big Browser Compatibility Fail.
30 Comments »
January 28th, 2008, 51 Comments »
UPDATE: After some confusion (see the comments), I’ve established that the cable provider is in fact Shaw, not Rogers, in Victoria. I’ve adjusted this post accordingly.
Maybe it’s just the plodding web access here in Morocco, but today I visited both Shaw and Telus’s websites today to scope out Internet access when we settle in Victoria in April of this year. They both offer a premium service at 5 or 6 MB/s and a 60 GB maximum per month for about $40 to $45 (before all those ridiculous extra fees). I assume there are discounts when you package Internet access with a landline (unlikely) or TV (likelier).
This is like voting for a prime minister in recent elections. Which is the least distasteful choice? I’ve complained (and heard many complaints) about both services in the past. Which is, uh, less worse? My criteria would probably be:
- How long does it take to get service after signing up?
- How reliable is the service?
- Who’s less likely to penalize me for exceeding the 60 GB maximum (a real concern, now that you can download HD movies that might average 4 GB)?
- Who’s less likely to filter network traffic and selectively decrease download speeds for bittorrent traffic and the like?
- Whose corporate policies are less repugnant?
What would you recommend? Maybe I should just go with carrier pigeons?
When we lived in Yaletown, I could circumvent this sort of red-state, blue-state problem by voting independent and signing up with Novus. Are there any such alternatives in Victoria?
51 Comments »
April 9th, 2007, 6 Comments »
About a year and a half ago, I wrote about how much the current pricing structure for Canadian mobile data access blows. I managed to spend CAN $112 for 3 MB of data. Both James and Boris link to Thomas Purves’s chart that shows how absurd current Canadian mobile data pricing is (click for larger image):
I was mostly writing this post to encourage you, my dear readers, to Digg this story. However, in the time I took to write this entry, it made it to the front page of Digg. So, mission accomplished without our help.
UPDATE: You know one thing that bugs me about the Digg community? Their apparent lack of a sense of humour. They seem to take vicious delight in digging down (or burying, if you like) any humorous comments. It seems to reinforce the stereotype of geeks as overly-serious poindexters.
At least Slashdot has the ‘funny’ category for such comments. Comparatively, Digg has simplified the user moderation on comments, but they’ve lost some important diversity along the way.
6 Comments »
March 29th, 2007, 1 Comment »
Will Pate is up in arms about the threat to network neutrality in Canada:
We will not roll over while major corporations ruin the most democratizing force, the biggest channel of personal expression and the most powerful enabler of innovation in human history. We cannot count on these major corporations to keep the citizens interests above their own quest for profit. Enron, Worldcom and actions of these very companies in Canada (I will be talking about them soon) have shown us that we must hold their feet to the fire.
This is off-topic, but I’m going to go with language or possibly the printing press as “the most powerful enabler of innovation in human history”. Anyway, Will cites Michael Geist, the biggest watchdog on the block of Canadian digital rights:
The Canadian Press is out this evening with an important story that reveals the government’s true view on net neutrality. Based on documents obtained under the Access to Information Act, they provide a clear picture of an Industry Minister and policy makers content to leave the issue alone, despite acknowledging that major telcos such as Bell and Telus are “determined to play a greater role in how Internet content is delivered” and that “they [Bell and Telus] believe they should be the gatekeepers of content, with the freedom to impose fees for their role.”
If you don’t know much about net neutrality, Michael’s article is a good place to start. As others have pointed out, the issue suffers from the ‘global warming’ problem–it has an innocuous, even positive sounding name. We’re long past the time when we can change things, but we’d have been better off calling it “network discrimination”.
Personally, I can’t rank this in my, I don’t know, top five issues at the moment. I’m glad other people are passionate defenders of this cause, but I’ve got a sign-the-petition level of interest. I’m always willing to be convinced otherwise, of course.
But don’t take my word for it, go read Will and Michael’s posts. In unrelated news, I want to know more about Will’s trip to Africa, which received a passing mention in the latest episode of CommandN.
1 Comment »
