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ctseawa at 09:58pm on 25/04/2006
ctseawa at 09:58pm on 25/04/2006Today I discontinued service with Verizon Wireless after roughly 11 years of service from them.
On its face there is nothing notable about this except for saving me roughly $80/month. I'm keeping the same number I've been using since I moved to Seattle.
However, it marks the retirement of my Kyocera Wireless 7135. It also marks me admitting defeat.
"Big deal. It's just a PDA-phone."
Well, yes... and no. It is the third generation of the pdQ. I've been using these phones since they were secret projects at Qualcomm. I showed one of the first pre-production units around at LISA and Usenix conference. I still have the original pdQ (Thumper), the second revision of that one (with a whopping 8MB RAM), the second generation (aka T2). All of them proudly on display in my souvenirs shelf. Now they are being joined by the third and last generation of this wonderful phone.
The defeat? That is my admitting something I've been loathe to admit - we are running out of choices. M$ has now managed a stranglehold on yet another area - that of the Portable Digital Assistant (PDA). It is almost impossible to find a PDA that isn't based on winCE (or, WM5 or whatever they are calling it this week). Even palm is shipping them now.
I bought a Palm T|X. It isn't very good. It is very expensive. It isn't a surprise palm is dying. It is disappointing. But, unlike my 7135, the T|X can talk with the BT GPS receiver I bought so I can find my way around Europe without getting tooooo lost.
So, for the first time since I started using mobile phones in 1995 my phone isn't even a Qualcomm or QCT/Kyocera phone. I'm using a Motorola phone because they admit that bluetooth exists and it can talk with my T|X. The combination of BT phone and BT PDA isn't nearly as good as the all-in-one, but it is modern, it does run current stuff, and the phone isn't huge. This is another area of defeat. I've been what could be called a loyal customer of QC/Kyo for a long time. I hated admitting they aren't keeping up.
So why am I depressed? I had being forced to make bad technical decisions just because the people who were making the good options stopped making them. We all lose when the M$'s of the world have their way. Without choice there can be no competition. Without competition they will never be challenged to make the product good, as opposed to 'good enough.'
On its face there is nothing notable about this except for saving me roughly $80/month. I'm keeping the same number I've been using since I moved to Seattle.
However, it marks the retirement of my Kyocera Wireless 7135. It also marks me admitting defeat.
"Big deal. It's just a PDA-phone."
Well, yes... and no. It is the third generation of the pdQ. I've been using these phones since they were secret projects at Qualcomm. I showed one of the first pre-production units around at LISA and Usenix conference. I still have the original pdQ (Thumper), the second revision of that one (with a whopping 8MB RAM), the second generation (aka T2). All of them proudly on display in my souvenirs shelf. Now they are being joined by the third and last generation of this wonderful phone.
The defeat? That is my admitting something I've been loathe to admit - we are running out of choices. M$ has now managed a stranglehold on yet another area - that of the Portable Digital Assistant (PDA). It is almost impossible to find a PDA that isn't based on winCE (or, WM5 or whatever they are calling it this week). Even palm is shipping them now.
I bought a Palm T|X. It isn't very good. It is very expensive. It isn't a surprise palm is dying. It is disappointing. But, unlike my 7135, the T|X can talk with the BT GPS receiver I bought so I can find my way around Europe without getting tooooo lost.
So, for the first time since I started using mobile phones in 1995 my phone isn't even a Qualcomm or QCT/Kyocera phone. I'm using a Motorola phone because they admit that bluetooth exists and it can talk with my T|X. The combination of BT phone and BT PDA isn't nearly as good as the all-in-one, but it is modern, it does run current stuff, and the phone isn't huge. This is another area of defeat. I've been what could be called a loyal customer of QC/Kyo for a long time. I hated admitting they aren't keeping up.
So why am I depressed? I had being forced to make bad technical decisions just because the people who were making the good options stopped making them. We all lose when the M$'s of the world have their way. Without choice there can be no competition. Without competition they will never be challenged to make the product good, as opposed to 'good enough.'
depressed
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