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1. Why have laptop displays gone to the dogs? My 6 year old Thinkpad R51 finally died. It was...

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My old R51 display was really nice with excellent viewing angles and really high resolution (1600×1200). The new display has ok resolution (1280×800, 1440×900 was an option but this was such a good deal that I didn’t mind) but the viewing angles suck, the brightness seems uneven. I was expecting the “LED lit” display to be something far better than what I had. But all it has is eyeball searing brightness. No matter what I do to calibrate it, it just doesnt look good and the contrast and brightness never seem to be at any setting that is good. Did I say the viewing angles suck. I mean they are really ridiculously bad.

It’s the same with the new Dell laptops at work. Where have all the good displays gone? Then I search online and all I can find is people complaining  about not having the same resolution or quality on new laptops as they had previously. Even people willing to pay a lot for good displays can’t find any. So I guess the days of good displays are gone.

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Color Nook

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The first one to respond was Nokia:

Antenna design is a complex subject and has been a core competence at Nokia for decades, across hundreds of phone models. Nokia was the pioneer in internal antennas; the Nokia 8810, launched in 1998, was the first commercial phone with this feature.

Nokia has invested thousands of man hours in studying human behavior, including how people hold their phones for calls, music playing, web browsing and so on. As you would expect from a company focused on connecting people, we prioritize antenna performance over physical design if they are ever in conflict.

In general, antenna performance of a mobile device/phone may be affected with a tight grip, depending on how the device is held. That’s why Nokia designs our phones to ensure acceptable performance in all real life cases, for example when the phone is held in either hand. Nokia has invested thousands of man hours in studying how people hold their phones and allows for this in designs, for example by having antennas both at the top and bottom of the phone and by careful selection of materials and their use in the mechanical design.

RIMM’s  response:

Apple’s attempt to draw RIM into Apple’s self-made debacle is unacceptable. Apple’s claims about RIM products appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public’s understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple’s difficult situation. RIM is a global leader in antenna design and has been successfully designing industry-leading wireless data products with efficient and effective radio performance for over 20 years. During that time, RIM has avoided designs like the one Apple used in the iPhone 4 and instead has used innovative designs which reduce the risk for dropped calls, especially in areas of lower coverage. One thing is for certain, RIM’s customers don’t need to use a case for their BlackBerry smartphone to maintain proper connectivity. Apple clearly made certain design decisions and it should take responsibility for these decisions rather than trying to draw RIM and others into a situation that relates specifically to Apple.

Motorola’s Response:

It is common knowledge in the industry that antennas on the outside of products have known issues, and despite the fact that they lead to smaller phones we have avoided them because consumers don’t like being told how to hold the phone. While the whole industry has to deal with phones being held in different ways, it is disingenuous to suggest that all phones perform equally. In our own testing we have found that Droid X performs much better than iPhone 4 when held by consumers.

HTC and Samsung:

“The reception problems are certainly not common among smartphones,” HTC Chief Financial Officer Hui-Meng Cheng said. “[Apple] apparently didn’t give operators enough time to test the phone.”

Samsung said it “hasn’t received significant customer feedback on any signal reduction issue for the Omnia II” smartphone that was featured in Apple’s video.

Click for demo from Apple’s Antenna Designer

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And the announcement said that Phones with WinMo 7 will be available this holiday season. Just in time for my contract to expire and time to upgrade my HTC Touch Pro, which so far has been totally awesome. And thanks to the great folks at xda, I now have Windows Mobile 6.5 running on it with the latest installment of HTC Sense.

Looking a the WinMo demo presentation coverage at engadget, it looks like WinMo 7 is trying to do what phone companies like HTC and Samsung have been trying to do with Windows Mobile for ages. Create new an innovative interfaces while hiding the OS internals further.

Hopefully Windows 7 Series lives up to it’s expectations. Even if not, I’m sure HTC and other phone makers will make the best of it.

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Since naked DSL has fewer taxes, assuming we pay $15 more for DSL after we get rid of our phone line, that still leaves us $25/month extra. Now if we can find home phone service for free or nearly free, that would be nice. If we can call long distance and internationally for less than an arm and a leg and without extra fees, that would be even better.

The goal here is not saving money but to put the money saved to better use – faster DSL and/or HD on Dish without an increase in the monthly budget.

Here is what I came up with from my hunt:

1. Ooma
2. VOIP Adapter + Sipgate
3. Google Voice + Gizmo
4. Magic Jack
5. Skype

Ooma Telo and Ooma Telo Handset Bundle
Best Price $229.99

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Ooma

The first option Ooma has an upfront cost of $229 (this deal might be a limited time offer because the Handset + Base is cheaper than the Base alone) plus an additional cost of $40 to port your own number. Calling is free inside US and international calling rates are posted on Ooma’s website. Calling India, which is where I call most often is 10-17c/minute depending on where you call, which is relatively expensive. Also it seems Ooma adds a fee to the international rate so you have to pay more than the rate mentioned. After one year Ooma charges $11.75/yr for regulatory fees. That’s it. It’s free otherwise until you need to replace your unit.

The upfront cost is high but acceptable considering calling is virtually free. But I’m always wary that electronics fail the day their warranty ends. So even if this thing lasts two years splitting the cost (not including the number porting) over two years gives about $10/month.

Not bad. If the device lasts more than two years, well thats just a bonus.

VOIP Adapter + Sipgate (or other provider)

Sipgate.com provides you with one free phone number (no number porting yet) and may not be a local number until they rollout nationwide. To use Sipgate with your regular phone, all you need is a VOIP adapter. These things are cheap and can be bought for under $50.

Sipgate.com charges $1.90/month as an E911 fee and gives you 60 free minutes each month. Beyond the 60 minutes, calling costs 1.9c/minute inside US (calling toll free numbers is free) and international rates vary. Calling India is about 7c/minute, which is reasonable.

In our case, I’m not sure how often and how long the Dish Box stays connected but it seems it is less than a minute every night. Counting our own phone use I’d say we would probably never cross 500 minutes/month maybe not even that much. But lets say we do use 500, that would give us monthly costs of $9.50 + $1.90 = 11.40 and adding the VOIP adapter brings the total to $13.50, just a little more than the Ooma. Considering our usage, it is probably going to be less than this.

There are other VOIP call provers including free ones like ipkall (Washington state numbers only) and you may want to check those out too.

Google Voice + Gizmo5 + VOIP Adapter

Google recently acquired Gizmo and new signups are temporarily unavailable. Google Voice is a great option for incoming only calls. Gizmo lets you make outgoing calls and lets you use your google voice number. Since I don’t have a Gizmo account already, I can’t tell you much but calls under 3 minutes are free from Gizmo. Beyond that rates are 1.9c/min inside US and outside varies by country. India is 7c. Of course if you are online, you can login to google voice and have them make the call, which would make calling free.

Also with some hacks –  you can have free incoming and outgoing for a slight inconvenience. Also you can use other services instead of Gizmo5 and searching online will give you many different setup options and tricks. But since Gizmo has been acquired, I’d just wait a little for everything to settle because Google does have the habit of making things free and easy.

As far as cost goes, Gizmo + Google Voice, when it becomes available again will cost less than both the options above but I’m not sure you’ll get E911 service. Gizmo did recently make a deal with a company to provide E911 service but the cost was mentioned at $5.95/month. No idea what will happen when they relaunch.

Magic Jack

I don’t know why I put magic jack here because it is not even a viable option unless you already have a computer on full time. Magic Jack software is not easy to uninstall and pops up ads every time you make a call. It is by far the cheapest option. Magic jack costs $40 and includes one year of service. The second year costs $20. That makes it about $2.50/month. Calling India is 5c/minute.

Skype

Skype is a more interesting option than magic jack, but a little more expensive. As far as using the service goes there are many plans and options including pay as you go or unlimited for a monthly fee etc. Getting your own phone number is $60/year without a subscription or $30/year with a subscription. Subscriptions start at $3/month for unlimited US and Canada calling to $12.95/month for unlimited calling anywhere. You have two options to use Skype as your home phone. Buy a Skype handset or buy a skype USB adapter for your computer. With the USB adapter, you will need your computer on all the time like magicjack but that is not necessary with a skype handset.

So assuming the $3/month plan, Skype costs  $66/yr = $6.50/month. Adding the USB adapter makes it $8.50. Adding a handset makes it $11.50/month. Calling India costs 10c/min.

Ooma vs Sipgate vs GV + Gizmo vs Magic Jack vs Skype

So now for the final verdict. I’m in no hurry to decide so I’ll wait until Gizmo relaunches but in the current state here are the comparisons:

Cost (assumes all devices last two years)
Ooma – ~$10/month ($12 if port your number)
Sipgate – ~$13.50/month (assuming 500 minutes outgoing calls)
GV + Gizmo – ~$10/month (assuming 500 minutes outgoing)
Magic Jack – ~$2.50/month
Skype – $6.50 – $11.50/month

Pros and Cons

Ooma, Sipgate, GV + Gizmo do not require a computer to be on and you can use your existing phone with a VOIP adapter. Skype does not require a computer to be on if you get a Skype phone. If you don’t mind having your computer on always you can use either Skype or Magic Jack. If Ooma disappears, you will end up with an expensive brick. If Magic Jack disappears, a cheap brick. I doubt Skype will go anywhere but if it did, you’d have bricks too. Your VOIP equipment for the other two however will work with any VOIP provider.

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Now the IE Blog claims that IE9 will be better and they show a graph of how IE9 is worse than any browser out there (though better than IE8). They claim that it will be better in the future but how much better will everyone else be by the time IE9 comes out? Both Safari and Chrome use Webkit. Firefox and Opera use their own rendering engines.

Web apps are the present and the future. Everybody knows that. Also all web developers know that IE sucks so none of us use IE for anything except testing. IE is so bad that Google needed to launch a plugin that would make IE use Chrome to render web pages because there is no way some of their new and upcoming stuff would work in IE.

Back to the point. Why we web developers hate IE:

1. Everything we make generally works flawlessly in all other browsers without much effort. Then we look at it in IE and it is all messed up, especially if you use anything that is a relatively new thing. That means we need to add hacks specifically for IE.
2. All the versions of IE need their own hacks. But we can’t install multiple versions of IE on the same computer. So we have Virtual Machines or just separate computers or different members of our teams having different versions on their computers to test out.
3. Every new version of IE that comes out makes our code more convoluted thanks to checks for more versions of IE.
4. Sometimes no matter what you do, newer standards will just never make it to IE in the near future generally slowing down the progress of the web. Take for example the IE blog above. They add things like better font rendering, hardware acceleration (what good is hardware acceleration when it is accelerating something that is wrong?). The most important parts aka standards are ignored – see the 32/100 Acid 3 score. There is not even a mention of HTML5 etc.

If you read the comments, the most common comment is that Microsoft should give up on their rendering engine and just use webkit. I’m sure every web developer will jump for joy and host a party because the worst nightmare of their job – trying to be compatible with IE – will be gone. That is never going to happen so somebody summed it up in the comments:

IE is fairly analogous to the cockroach. You can step on it, blow it up and irradiate it, but now you have an annoyed radioactive abomination that’s going to go breed more annoyed radioactive abominations.

Thankfully a lot of major websites are dropping support for IE6 which hopefully will make those IE6 users out there upgrade or switch. But with IE9 there will be one more thing to test for. All of us developers want is for Microsoft to get out of the browser business. Why does Microsoft even bother spending millions of dollars to make an inferior product that is full of holes? Why can’t they just adopt the Google and Apple path of using a standard freely available engine and just improve the user experience? It can still be IE, but at least it will be a good one.

The only reason I can think that MS still works on IE is that it is integrated into everything – Windows, all their development tools and most Microsoft software somehow depends on IE. While I’m complaining here is one more – even Microsoft has a hard time developing complex apps that work in IE and other browsers. That’s why they have separate applications for Outlook web services for IE/non IE browsers.

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• The kiosk doesn’t have physical media so it can potentially store millions of movies.
• The kiosk will never run out of a particular movie
• People can play the movies on their netbooks (no dvd drives but SD slots, yes) on the go or on their phones (iPhones need not apply) or cameras (if the media is playable on those) etc.
• A lot of modern DVD players and TVs come with built in SD card readers, I know my Bluray player has one.
• You don’t need to drive back to return the movie. Redbox = $1/night = $4 for 4 nights but this is just $1.99 because never have to return it.
• SD cards go all the way upto 32GB with new 64GB cards just coming out giving you the potential to rent 10 or more movies at a time in HD if the kiosk lets you.

What’s not to like about the idea? Hopefully Blockbuster’s implementation is good to start with.

It seems Blockbuster is trying to throw everything and the kitchen sink at Netflix and Redbox. First the in-store exchanges for online rentals, then not charging extra for BluRay, Redbox style kiosks, acquiring a company for movie downloads (though they are not free like netflix), following Netflix in trying to get Blockbuster’s app on various devices like Tivo and Samsung players and now this.

Hopefully something will work out for them.

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That makes the Droid $150 and the Droid Eris $50! Also use my link to letstalk.com and use coupon code “holiday” to get another 5% off.

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