Tech update

Technology - a curse, a cure, an addiction? Yes, a little of all of these, and more.

When we bought our house, it was listed as "high speed internet available". I didn't do proper checking to find out what, precisely, they considered "high speed internet". Turns out they meant satellite internet - because they were leaving the hardware from their subscription to WildBlue.

We considered it and after a lot of research, quickly nixed that, choosing instead to survive on dial-up as needed. I think that lasted about six months before I was going nuts. It's better to simply not have a network connection than to have one that's unreliable or horribly slow.

Almost exactly a year ago, I upgraded my phone and went to the Palm Pre Plus via Verizon, explicitly because of the free Mobile Hotspot (MHS) promo. I reviewed the phone shortly after getting it and was pleased at the time.

It's been a year and it's time for an update.

Several weeks after I got the phone, it stopped letting me turn on MHS - giving me an error about "needing the feature enabled by Verizon". I went through all the troubleshooting I could think of and got nowhere, so went back to the store and had them poke at it. The only option was a hard reset of the phone, erasing ALL my apps and data in the process. Most of them were backed up, but restoring data was a headache.

I'd also noticed a disturbing trend with the phone heating up while charging and especially when using MHS - to the point that it was uncomfortable to touch the phone. A month later, the "feature required" problem occurred again, and combined with the heat issues, I decided to use the warranty.

I took it to Verizon and politely but firmly insisted on a new phone. The tech balked at first, saying the phone was working fine, it was normal for it to get warm, etc. I stuck to my guns and they sent a new (refurbished) phone by two-day shipping.

The new one didn't have the heat issue, so that was a plus in its favor. However, it has continually had issues with other things. The MHS has had the "feature required" error a few times. The "Mail" app has lost count of unread messages in my inboxes, indicating that there are new messages when there aren't any. The fix for that is either a hard reset of the phone, or deleting and re-adding ALL the mail accounts.

The touch screen is not bad, generally speaking - except that it doesn't respond if your skin is dry, as mine usually is in winter. Licking the tip of a finger just to use the phone is aggravating at best.

And since I'm calling it a phone ... actually making a phone call is arguably the worst part of dealing with this thing. It just seems tedious. If the slider is open, as I tend to prefer when talking on the phone, snapping it closed *doesn't end the call* - you still have to punch the "end" button on-screen. Perhaps I've been spoiled by ten-plus years of flip-phones.

MHS still works mostly-OK, as long as it has decent signal. Sometimes it has signal but won't exchange data - either via MHS or on the phone itself - and I chalk that up to a network problem, not the phone. If the signal drops to 1X (2G), data speeds tend to be slower than dial-up. Unless I'm trying to do something critical, I'll close the laptop and go do something else. One major issue with MHS - when a client device connects, the phone loses network connection for up to a full minute.

The last nitpick - the charger doesn't have enough juice to keep the phone charged while running MHS. A constant data stream (IRC, AIM, Skype, etc) will kill the battery in 2-3 hours on 3G, and less on 1X. If its being used for web browsing, 4-6 hours is more likely, and relatively reasonable. For off-charger use, sixteen hours of "in pocket" time is about it - without heavy data usage or game playing. In other words: the battery isn't sufficient for the device.

I've just ordered a Samsung Galaxy Tab that I hope to use for most of my mobile data. We're going to look at a Verizon Mifi for our home internet connection, and dropping both MrsZ and myself back to "dumb" phones for daily usage - perhaps even pre-paid phones if we can find something with moderately-acceptable coverage at home.

Short form: Palm Pre Plus NOT recommended.