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Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Sunday, March 25, 2012
The 7 worst smartphone injustices and how to fight them
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?Injustice in the end produces independence,? Voltaire wrote.?For their part, smartphone users must endure a litany of injustices, ranging from endless contracts that tie them to outdated hardware to phones that run out of juice by noon.
Unfortunately, we?ve become so?inured?to the injuries that we hardly notice when?phone?vendors and carriers hit us with yet another body blow. Fortunately, you don?t have to be a mobile martyr. Here are the seven most malicious forms of telephone tyranny and the best ways to fight them.?
1. Sealed batteries, weak battery life
If you love being infantilized, some of today?s top smartphone vendors are waiting for you with a pair of high-definition diapers and an LTE pacifier. Rather than giving you the choice of whether or not to replace their low-capacity batteries with slightly-thicker, high-capacity units, more and more smartphone manufacturers are using sealed, non-removable batteries.?
Even worse, most of the non-removable-battery phones have very pedestrian battery lives. The?Droid 4?might be the world?s best keyboarded phone, but its 1785 mAH battery limits it to just 5 and half hours of continuous use and, if you don?t like that, Motorola has a message for you: ?tough touch screens.? HTC must feel the same way, because all three of its upcoming ?One? series phones?have sealed in batteries, even though none exceeds the pedestrian 1800 mAH capacity.
The?Droid RAZR Maxx?has a sealed battery, but gets more than 8 hours of endurance because that battery is an impressive 3300 mAH. However, should the RAZR Maxx?s battery lose its ability to hold a full charge, you?re out of luck.?On the flip side,?Samsung?s Galaxy Nexus?lasts under 4 hours on a charge, but you can replace its battery with one that?s double the capacity.
The excuse for this paternalistic practice is that providing a battery door and the space to stick your finger in and pop the existing battery might add a millimeter or two to the phone chassis. How many millimeters is your freedom worth?
How to fight the sealed battery injustice:?Only buy phones with user-removable batteries. ?If you already own a sealed-battery phone, you?ll need an external battery like the New Trent iFuel.
2. 20-month wait between phone upgrade
To get a good smartphone at a decent price, you usually need to agree to a two-year contract, but what happens 6 months into that contract when your phone is eons out of date and you want to upgrade it? In spring 2011, the?HTC Thunderbolt?was Verizon?s hottest phone, because it was the first with LTE. By fall, the single-core, low-res screened handset looked like a joke next to high-res speed demons like the?Droid RAZR?and?HTC Rezound.
The three largest U.S. carriers each make you wait 20 months to get a replacement at subsidized prices (less than $500 or so) by which time your current phone will be ready to take its place in a museum.?T-Mobile offers ?early upgrade pricing? after 12 months that?s not as favorable as a subsidized rate but gives you some discount off of the retail price. After 22 months, T-Mobile subscribers on two-year contracts are eligible for a fully subsidized upgrade.
How to fight the 20-month upgrade Injustice:?It?s hard to get a phone at the two-year subsidized price sooner than 20 months into your contract, but there are ways to save. First, try calling your carrier and see if you can negotiate for an early upgrade, because occasionally company reps will give long-time customers a break. T-Mobile users can take advantage of early upgrade pricing, and anyone can buy an unlocked phone through a third-party vendor that offers a bit lower retail pricing than the carrier.
3. Pay extra for tethering
It?s not enough for carriers to charge you $30 or more for a smartphone data plan. They make you pay another $30 or so to share that data with your notebook or tablet. What the heck? If major home ISPs like Time Warner Cable or Comcast tried to charge you separately for every device that connects to your router, there?d be an ?occupy the customer service department? movement.
How to fight the tethering premium injustice:?Fortunately, there are ways around the fees, if you?re willing to cheat a bit and use a wired tethering app like?PdaNet?or a wireless hotspot app like?Barnicle WiFi Tether, the latter of which requires you to root your phone.
4. Lose your smartphone, lose your shirt
Yesterday, you bought a new smartphone for $99, but this morning you left it in a cab. Buying a replacement will cost a hefty $550 and you don?t have much choice in the matter, because you?re under contract for the next 24 months and the early termination fees are too expensive to let you walk away.
Your carrier may offer you a phone insurance plan at the time of purchase, but it probably won?t be a good deal. For example, Verizon?s?Total Equipment Coverage plan?promises only a ?comparable model? to your phone, says that the replacement device may be refurbished, and charges a $99 deductible on any claims in addition to a $6.99 monthly fee ($168 over 24 months). Unless you?ve had a psychic vision of yourself dropping the phone into a sewer, you?d be better off not buying this kind of half-hearted but full-priced protection.
It?s understandable that carriers would charge you a somewhat higher price to replace a lost phone, because they take a loss on every handset they sell at subsidized prices. However, I can?t help but think that the full retail prices they charge you are jacked up, because they know you have no choice but to pay them. Unfortunately, wholesale pricing for smartphones isn?t normally made public, but it?s hard to believe Verizon pays anywhere close to $649 for the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.
How to fight the lost phone pricing injustice:?As I suggested in the ?early upgrades? section above, you can try to negotiate with your carrier for a discount or turn to third-party sellers on sites like eBay. For example, on eBay, you can buy an unlocked Samsung Galaxy Nexus for $500, $150 less than Verizon?s $640 retail price. ?You can also get a used model for as little as $350.
5. Disinterested carriers, vendors don't issue OS updates
Imagine depending on Best Buy, where you bought your?Pavilion?dm4 notebook in 2011, rather than Microsoft to issue all your Windows updates. That?s the kind of lunacy Android and Windows Phone users have to face today, because they?re dependent on the kindness of their carriers for critical OS updates, even if they involve security breaches.
So, if Sprint CEO Dan Hesse has a bad day and decides that HTC Evo 4G users shouldn?t get Ice Cream Sandwich or AT&T?s Ralph De La Vega doesn?t want Windows Phone users to get the coming update that?allows them to attach multiple photos to the same SMS message?(therefore sending fewer texts), that?s their prerogative.
Unfortunately, there?s no strong business incentive for the carriers or manufacturers to issue such upgrades. The carriers already have your money and a two-year commitment for you to keep paying them every month, with or without updates. Smartphone vendors consider the carriers ? not you ? to be their clients. And the carriers couldn?t care less about spending money to support people who already bought their products.
When your phone is still running Android 2.1 while the latest handsets have 4.0, you might swear under your breath and vow to change wireless services or phone brands when your contract is up, but since they all do the same thing and churn rates are very low, they know you?ll be back.
Apple issues its iOS updates directly to all of its phones at the same time. Why can?t Google and Microsoft follow its example?
How to fight the slow OS update / no OS update injustice:?If you have an Android smartphone, you can probably find instructions on how to root it and install a custom ROM with the latest OS (Ice Cream Sandwich) at the?XDA Developer?s Forum?or a tutorial site like?The Unlockr.?
6. Out-of-control texting rates
Most carriers charge $30 for 2 or 3GB of data, but 20 cents for each tiny, 160-character text message if you go over your allotment or aren?t on a pricey unlimited SMS plan. Different experts estimate this 20-cent price is a markup of 4,900 to 7,300 percent on something that has almost no cost to the provider. After all, the amount of data per message is so tiny. The worst part of paying per message is that anyone can spam you with SMS messages and make you pay for them against your will.
How to fight the outrageous SMS fee injustice:?Users can log in to instant messaging apps like Google Voice to avoid paying SMS fees, but then they have to give out a second phone number just for texting. Instant messaging apps like Google Talk or eBuddy also fit the bill but gulp battery like there?s no tomorrow and require your friends to also be logged in for you to talk to them.
7. Surfing web in a foreign country costs more than flying there
Though many U.S. carriers offer phones that are capable of getting a signal when you travel abroad, the price of such service is nuts, frequently costing as much as $20 per megabyte of data. Even so-called ?affordable? packages like?AT&T?s $24.99 for 50MB?of monthly global data (with $1 per MB overage) are incredible rip-offs. Download a PowerPoint presentation to show a client in Europe or view the last day?s worth of email and you may end up paying hundreds of dollars before you even know what hit you.
Meanwhile, the cost of buying a local prepaid data plan in many countries is far less than you pay in the U.S. When I visited Spain earlier this year, I was able to purchase a prepaid SIM card on the Orange network with a week?s worth of unlimited data for just 9 Euros (around $12). Are you telling me that U.S. carriers can?t get a similar deal on data for its customers? No doubt AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon are paying foreign carriers even less than I paid on my own, but they?re marking up the cost per megabyte to unfathomable rates.
How to fight the outrageous data roaming rate injustice:?Unfortunately for consumers, it?s not always easy to get your carrier to unlock your smartphone so you can buy a SIM from a local carrier. The best bet for frequent travelers may be to buy an unlocked phone.
If you don?t need to make voice calls on your smartphone, renting a mobile hotspot from?Xcom Global?might be your ideal solution. The company charges just $15 a day for a portable 3G MiFi that comes with unlimited Internet access on a leading network in whatever country you?re visiting. When carrying the MiFi in your bag, you can use it to get the Internet on your phone, laptop and tablet, all at the same time.
More smartphone stories from Laptop:
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Disneyland: Good morning from Disneyland Resort! Today?s hours: Disneyland 8 AM ? 12 AM Disney California Adventure 10 AM ? 9 PM. http://t.co/h2KrVe2a
Good morning from Disneyland Resort! Today?s hours: Disneyland 8 AM ? 12 AM Disney California Adventure 10 AM ? 9 PM.? Source: http://twitter.com/Disneyland/statuses/183191744815431680
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Saturday, March 24, 2012
96% Pariah
"Pariah," from first-time writer/director Dee Rees, doesn't break much artistic ground. It tells the same gay/lesbian coming-out story that we've seen a million times. But it's told particularly well and from within a black urban context, which I don't believe has been done before. It also goes a bit deeper into the hearts and minds of the homophobic parents than typically is done, which was great. Unfortunately, it only scratches those surfaces. Kim Wayans, who of course has a long history in comedy, shows she has major dramatic talent, playing the homophobic mother of the main character. The cast is universally good, but Wayans is the stand-out. The main character is a black teenage girl in Brooklyn going through the coming-out process. She has fully come out to herself as a lesbian, and she has even found her way into a lesbian circle of friends. She even frequents a women's night club. But she hasn't told Mom or Dad about any of this, both of whom are homophobic. Mom is particularly venomous in her hatred of gays and lesbians. You can see that Dad, a detective in the NYPD, in his heart of hearts is not a bigot. Thrown into the mix to complicate things a little bit is a bisexual girl eager to have lesbian experiences to explore herself. But she tosses lesbians aside like useless candy wrappers after she's had her fun. If I were going to give Dee Rees advice, I would say this: Ms. Rees, in "Pariah" you started digging into the parent characters with some real psychological and artistic depth. I encourage you to go more deeply in that direction. I think your true gifts as an artist lie there. I would give anything to see a sequel where you explore what happened to that mother and what she's really fighting. You hint that her husband is beginning to stray, but I think there's more in there. Help us see it. Remember when that great schoolteacher tells Alike that she could "go deeper" with her poetry? You could go deeper with your films. I know you could.
January 1, 2012Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pariah_2011/
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Home Improvement Made Simple With These Easy Tips ? Music ...
Know your own capabilities, and know too when you should call a professional. Use this home improvement advice to determine which kinds of jobs are within your reach. You could sneak a peek at Examining Cabinet hinges for quality opinion.
When you are creating significant renovations, you may have to shield your self whilst you are operating by sporting the correct security gear. In the event you are lifting hefty products, make certain to put on a brace. Helmets are also great if there?s a danger of an object falling.
If you want to renovate your house, cope with any electrical or plumbing problems within the house 1st. This tends to make sense to obtain this carried out 1st simply because you?ll need to become within of one?s walls for this type of a fix. Furthermore, it is a lot simpler and much less expensive to obtain your plumbing and electrical maintentance carried out when walls are currently torn open.
If you require outdoor lighting, you should consider installing motion-activated lights. This helps improve the home?s security and can also prevent teenagers from sneaking out. This will also help to reduce your electricity costs.
Attempt replacing your current light bulbs with bulbs which are much more power effective. By performing this you?ll minimize your utility cost and also preserve the environment, and they will provide better light and last longer as well. Use modern, energy efficient bulbs instead.
You might not understand how lengthy you?ve been operating outdoors within the warmth. Hydration is very essential once the temperature gets hot. Take a second away out of your function and possess a couple of sips of water. Whilst you?re performing that, take the time for you to value what you?ve achieved.
Stick towards the tasks you are able to securely deal with and employ experts to complete these which are past your skill level. Keep this advice in mind to ensure that you don?t get in over your head and waste a lot of time and money. Find out more Click Here To Find Out More.
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Friday, March 23, 2012
Stip disorder is officially found in New Mexico and Arizona-grown chile peppers.
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2012 Coda Automotive Electric Sedan Gets Price Cut
Just the Facts:
- The 2012 Coda Automotive electric sedan went on sale last week priced at $38,145 or $6,755 less than previously expected.
- Coda said in September 2010 that the sedan would start at $44,900.
- Coda late last week began delivering cars out of a showroom based in a Los Angeles shopping mall.
LOS ANGELES ? The 2012 Coda Automotive electric sedan went on sale last week priced at $38,145 or $6,755 less than previously expected. The price includes an $895 destination charge and does not include a federal tax credit of up to $7,500.
"In California, federal and individual state tax saving and credits may bring the price down to $27,250," said Coda Automotive in a statement.
Coda said in September 2010 that the sedan would start at $44,900. The Coda is $2,095 more than the base 2012 Nissan Leaf SV, which starts at $36,050.
"It's not pricing that's decisive in the end," said Coda's then-CEO Kevin Czinger in September 2010. "At that price ($44,900), there will be very strong demand for what we think is the first real usable all-electric car that meets peoples' day-to-day driving needs."
Coda Automotive late last week began delivering cars out of a showroom based at the Century City Westfield Mall in Los Angeles. It also kicked off test drives of the car at several locations in California, including San Diego, Irvine and Silicon Valley.
The five-passenger Coda is a battery-powered conversion of a sedan sold in China as the Hafei Saibao. Coda said the car can go up to 125 miles on a single charge. Coda said that all early reservation holders will receive a numbered plaque located on the center console and custom key chain.
The EPA says the Coda returns the mpg equivalent of 77 mpg in city driving and 68 mpg on the highway.
The Coda makes its real-world debut at a time when gas prices have hit an average of $3.86 per gallon, according to the AAA Daily Fuel Gauge Report.
Inside Line says: Coda Automotive resets pricing. Now we'll see how many buyers will bite.
Source: http://www.insideline.com/car-news/2012-coda-automotive-electric-sedan-gets-price-cut.html
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