The entire reason we ended up in a Sprint plan, was due to our first exposure to the Wi Fi hotspot from the smart phone. After 'country DSL', Satellite, US Cellular Data Cards ... we ended up with the Unlimited data connection from the EVO smart phone on Sprint.
It was the fastest thing we had experienced out here in the sticks, and still is. Until the next piece of technology comes along, this is working just great!
The downside? We paid $30 a month for this service on top of the plan for that single phone to sit on our counter ... so tax and all that was about $92 a month. Unacceptable.
Fast forward to today. Now we all have an Android in the house, and Corinne carries that EVO as her phone. The $30 Hotspot was shut off months ago, since we all have our own high speed device.
We quickly found PDANet, a free app from the market that allows you to connect your Android to a computer so that the computer can use the phones data connection (internet). To use the full throttle version of PDANet, after 30 days, you have to pay a one time fee of $15.
Today, I open PDANet to do some surfing with my MacBook and I see a new option - Wi Fi!
What! This was once only a 'root' option - let's check this out. I follow the prompts, read the fine print ... and voila, it's now available without root!
Download the little piece it needs from the market (it tells/shows you how), start it up and BOOM!
Now have free Wi Fi Hotspot emitting from my Samsung Galaxy SII :) Happy place.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Thursday, March 8, 2012
The New iPad announced
Steve Jobs may be in Heaven, still inventing wonderful products ... but Apple has not lost the knack to keep a secret.
'The New iPad' (not iPad 3, not iPad HD - the New iPad) was announced yesterday, and I must say ... it looks pretty ding dang good!
The much awaited Retina display, is probably the single most important upgrade for iPad, in my opinion.
Why?
The iPhone, when it was upgraded to Retina, from the old and lower resolution display it had in iPhone 3 ... became an absolutely beautiful screen to feast your eyes upon. Characters popped off the screen, the sharpness was second to none, it was so easy to read ...
... that it left the iPad 1 and 2, a less desirable device to read anything from. How can that be, you say?
Compare the resolution of an old iPhone to an iPhone 4 or 4S and you will see it immediately. There is no comparison, the upgrade is THAT noticeable.
Look at an iPad 2 compared to an iPhone 4 or 4S ... and it's THAT noticeable as well, that even though an iPad has a monster size screen compared to iPhone - it's actually not as easy to read anything on as the iPhone.
That's a lot of talk for something you will see in a nano second, but it's THE reason I never bought an iPad 2 - no Retina (or HD display). You can see a little of what has been said for yourself at the link just below - iPad 2 and the new iPad are side by side with a magnifying glass over the word Library - the difference does look just as shown.
For the full display of the awesome device, go HERE.
The other notable and telling addition, is 4G LTE - or 'faster internet' capability. This is something iPhone 4S was short of - disappointing many that were waiting to surf the net as fast as their Android based Samsung Galaxy SII or Photon friends. The addition of 4G is important ... because that means iPhone 5 (or what ever they are going to call it) should also get the long awaited speed increase.
Onto the other changes;
New features of the new iPad:
iSight camera
Voice dictation
4G LTE Next-Generation Wireless support:
Pricing:
iPad with LTE 4G
iPad with WiFi
Release Date:
March 16 in US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, Japan.
Preorder Date:
Available for pre-order today!
Worth the price? You bet! It is. Apple has fierce competition in this market, wich Samsung, Motorola and all the other manufacturers vying for a piece of your wallet. The one thing no one can duplicate though ... is Apples simplicity of design, and use. iPhone and iPad do not come with a manual ... it's simply not needed because the devices are that intuitive to use. I've seen my (then) 3 year old change the wallpaper on an iPhone, watch a movie, listen to music ... and my Dad, at 70 years of age + ... also picked up either one in the matter of minutes and now LOVES all the Apple products. There is no other company that delivers that type of ease of use, and a product 'that just works'. |
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Defecting from Apple .. me?
This may be pre-mature, but the fact that the words were even typed ... lends itself to the possibilities of life away from iPhone.
We will have to see what improvements Apple has made to iPhone 5 before I say nay nay. And that's why this 'may' be pre-mature, saying I'm leaving my tech love of life iPhone for a (gulp) Android.
There, I said it. Well, typed it. Okay okay, why am I even typing it?
Economics, partly. Power, secondly.
Lets cover power first. iPhone (like iPad, MacBook Air, iPod, etc) all have a non-changeable internal battery. When I say non-changeable, I mean you cannot change it out yourself without a few tools, a video, and a healthy dose of bravado! I've looked at the various websites that offer the tools, the videos, the expertise, the parts ... to change out any battery in any iDevice. But I've never pulled the trigger. For a small fee (more importantly - time away from your hands while it's being done), most of the companies that offer the above mentioned will also change that battery out for you. Living without the iDevice in the meantime, is something else I've never pulled the trigger on.
We handed our old iPhone 3G's down to our kids last year after Corinne and I purchased iPhone 4. At that time, we had been carrying and using the 3G's for about 18 months. Needless to say, the batteries would be better suited to paper weights now. The platform itself (the iPhone 3g) is getting old, showing age, especially when sitting next to one of our 4's. And as Apple does a marvelous job of, the software on the 3g's just does not keep pace with the software and capabilities of the new platforms.
All this to say .. a few things. The kids are looking at new phones. The thought of getting them into an iPhone 5 is not something I'm comfortable with, based solely on price alone ($199 - $299 is my guess based on memory). That's a lot out of pocket for a 'student' to be responsible for. They have been pretty good with the 3g though, so I cannot complain from that standpoint. As we know, it's not always your child that ends up 'losing' something ... sometimes, it's another person that gets the device into their hands without consent - leaving your child with no phone and you with a decision to buy another, or say 'tough luck' Junior.
So, in looking at replacing the old 3g's of the kids, I heard one say 'I don't want an iPhone', and the other said 'I want iPhone 5, unless we're leaving AT&T, then I want a Droid.' Hmm, ok. Now here is the other part of kids having iPhones ... I did not hear 'I want a new phone' for a LONG time compared to other 'starter' phones they had before. Meaning, they had the 'cool' phone, and it does everything they need it to do, hands down. So the nagging of 'I want that phone over there' was not heard until recently.
But this got me to thinking ... should I look at Droid more seriously as well? After all, I have one on my counter that sits there 24/7/365 as a Hot Spot for our internet. It's with Sprint, because Sprint has ponied up the cash and invested in the local infrastructure to blanket Blackhawk County with true 3G Data speeds making web surfing a pleasure out in the country - Thank you Sprint! But the phone that provides this wonderful usefulness for us is an EVO 4G phone, which planted in a launch market like Minneapolis or Chicago ... also provides blazing fast 4G surfing speed ... which completely blows my mind.
One thing the EVO does really well ... is lose it's back cover to expose a battery that can be changed out by the owner. :) Now, we are adding value! No more battery issues if you can simply go buy a new one, or get one in the mail using a few clicks of the mouse. Also, instead of charging the iPhone 3 to 4 times a day (like I do now with my 4), I can simply change out the battery. Charge 2 of them at night, run one to death, install the second, and I'll probably make it through a complete day with an EVO or newer Android phone.
So the power issue is pretty big, for me, and for Brock (we use our phones more than the girls ... yeah, it's a guy thing I guess).
Economics.
Now here is where the rubber really meets the road. Okay, let alone the fact that we could get into 4 EVO's for $400 ... vs. one iPhone for $300 .. the story get's much better than just he 'up front' outlay of cash to get started. It's multi faceted too, meaning, there is more than one place that will save us a tremendous amount of money per month ... adding up to mega bucks over a 2, 3, 4 and 5 year period.
The service plan difference, is where this comparison really gets interesting. Sprint, is forging the way by offering Unlimited - Everything. Calls, text, picture mail (MMS to the rest of the world), email, Data (web surfing) ... everything - is unlimited. Okay, just to be clear on one thing, they don't charge you for mobile to mobile calls - for any mobile to mobile call on any carrier ... so unless you call a landline, you are not getting into your allowable minutes. Virtually, everything is unlimited.
AT&T, however, has 'just' rolled out mobile to mobile (on any other carrier called, not just the old way of AT&T to AT&T calls) free calling. They have rollover minutes, but I suspect those are going away with the adoption of mobile to mobile. But where this gets thick is, AT&T is still operating under their tiered data plan system. Corinne and I are grandfathered in on the unlimited side of Data, but the kids phones are tied down by 200 mb of usage, then once going over that, it's another $15 a month. So getting the kids into unlimited, really just spells further peace of mind that the cell phone bill will become a 'fixed' amount vs a guessing game.
Two smart phones with Sprint, 1500 minutes of talk time (again, only needed when calling a landline because mobile to mobile will not charge the minutes), unlimited everything else runs $129 before any discounts. Military, John Deere, United Airlines (just examples) have Employee plans with Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, etc. Our United discount of 26% is going to take a formidable chunk out of that. Then, as for the other two smart phones that will be on the account ... each one is $19.99 + 10 for premium internet usage (fancy wording for the 4g data network surcharge) ... so each additional smart phone line is about $30. All told, Unlimited use of 4 smart phones on Sprint will run us $155.46 before taxes.
Our AT&T bill is presently $332 a month (my Dad is on that bill too). Subtracting my Dads portion, we still look at $270 a month with AT&T and we are limited on the data side with 2 of the phones. AT&T has invested a lot in Apple (by giving the phone away compared to what you would pay for it without a contract) ... and it shows right here in the bill difference of $115 a month disparity between AT&T and Sprint.
$115 a month is a BIG difference. I have not even mentioned that AT&T only offers Edge data speeds at my house, so it's just plain killer slow until we travel to Waterloo or Cedar Rapids where 3G has just recently shown up. Sprint has blanketed us early with 3G, putting AT&T in the rear view mirror.
Now, for the other 'a ha' moment. As I mentioned, we have an EVO on the counter that just spits out internet for us in the house. And it's only sitting there because AT&T is so pathetically slow on the internet side, that I couldn't stand it anymore ... so we added the EVO just this year. BUT, that EVO is not free, demanding another $98 a month from us.
By converting us all to Sprint, getting Droids that are Hot Spot capable ... we not only save $115 a month through the service plan, but we also drop the requirement for the extra EVO, which is another $98 a month.
All told, we save about $213 a month just by moving to Sprint.
1 Year = $2,556
3 Years = $7,668
5 Years = $12,780
Wow! Without even working my Plan B (Advocare), the 5 year number pays off all of our current junk debt. And we get faster phones? Sign me up!
Now, here is what a lot of people don't look at too. Since I'm trying to chuck United out of my life, and rely solely on myself ... I have to look at what it would take to earn the money to pay for the difference in the service.
What do I mean? Well, when you pay a bill, remember that you are using your take home pay. Uncle Sam has already taken his percentage out. You still had to work _____ hours to earn the money, to pay the bill.
So, the yearly savings of $2,556, at my tax rate ... equates to the necessity to earn $3,476 per year. Meaning, I have some options when I save that much money.
I could, work $3,476 dollars 'less' at United. I could, take that amount per year off of what I need to earn to just stay afloat, and get into a lower paying job for example. I could survive on less money from my Plan B supplying 100% of my income vs 'needing' to be gone 20 days a month with United. Does that make sense? It's loud and clear to this guy!
Am I trying to sell this to you? Nope. I'm trying to get you to think about options in your life. Options you do have, we all have. With everything we do, there is an option. Freedom, is having options. We live in the in land of the free ... and I'm free to move to Sprint, to save money, so I can come home earlier. That, is freedom.
Is carrying an iPhone 5 more important than saving money? I don't know yet :) I've not seen one, held it, used it. I have no idea what the end product will look like. Which is why a little of this may be pre-mature. Either way, we are going to Sprint. Wether I purchase the new iPhone 5 (which Sprint will launch in October), or I move into a Droid ... only makes a difference on the front side of the purchase. It's the service plan advantage that's going to give me more freedom
So we will wait another month and see what iPhone 5 has to deliver.
Shawn Barnhart
Advocare Advisor / Distributor
We are Fanatical about Your Success!
Shawn@TeamInspire.biz
(319) 296-5656 cell/text
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Looking forward to iOS 5
Isn't it great to have friends? You probably have friends that are really good at working on your car, others are your 'go to' for watching your kids, yet others are there for advice with what ever you can throw at them.
I'll be your tech guy. Not quite an 'end user', but not a full blown Geek Squad guy either. I love tech, I understand it, I try to leverage every ounce out of it, and I look forward to what's on the horizon all the time.
So, me being your tech guy, I subscribe to a few techie type magazines that keep me on the leading edge (public of course) of electronic news. I also use Mashable, a free App on iPhone that sends me push notifications for any breaking news in the world of phones/computers/iPads, etc.
Sprint iPhone 5
The first welcome piece of information that I am really looking forward to is ... News sources have reported that Sprint may be offering iPhone 5 before Christmas. Why is this a big deal? One reason ... Sprint is going to remain an 'all you can eat' (unlimited) Data provider. Sprint has come a long ways from just a few years ago. They used to have poor poor customer service. And let me just say, there is no 'perfect' carrier out there ... they all have their ups and downs. For me, it boils down to who has the best coverage where you're going to use your phone, and is the price competitive. Well, Sprint offers all you use data (internet on your phone) for $69 a month. That's not just internet, it's everything. $69 per line, you get everything unlimited. Pair that with a iPhone 5 and you have a happy customer (ME!).
AT&T and Verizon both have ditched the old unlimited plans, and have gone with a tiered service plan. Verizon, for example, just announced these prices/usage tiers;
- 75MB - $10/mo
- 2GB - $30/mo
- 5GB - $50/mo
- 10GB - $80/mo
Casual user? 2 GB is probably going to be more than you need. Using your phone as a hotspot? 10GB may not be enough (first month with our Sprint EVO, we used 32.5 GB - because we could - it's unlimited).
Point being, Sprint is leading the charge for what consumers want and deserve with a wireless carrier. I applaud them for that!
iOS 5
i (applies to Apple, iPad, iPhone, I ... etc). OS (operating system), the software that makes that brick of device do what it does. 5 - the latest iteration of said software, which is going to bring some earth shattering (for Apple) improvements to all of us that love iPhone, iPad, Touch devices.
First, a list of improvements;
- One-Touch camera access
- PC-free
- Ringtones
- Tweets
- iMessage
- Notifications
- Gaming
- Wi-Fi Sync
- AirPlay
- Newsstand
- Calendar and Location Based Reminders
- Accessability
- New Safari Browser
Those may appear mundane to you now, but if you are a user like me, you understand exactly what each has to offer looking forward.
One - Touch camera. From the lockscreen, you will be able to access camera with one touch (much like Droid users can now). Also, once in the camera app, you will gain access to the 'snap' function of the camera with a volume button vs how it is now - an icon on the screen of the phone. It will produce less jiggle, more focused shots. Also, an 8 megapixel camera is said to be the next upgrade ... I cannot imagine better pictures than what iPhone 4 shoots now - they are pretty impressive for a phone.
PC-Free. One of my long standing complaints of the way things are today with syncing phone or ipad to computer is ... the requirement of the cable. In todays world of bluetooth, wireless, etc., the need to hook a device physically to another, for anything ... is ludicrous to me. Apple listened to the users and with iOS5, the cord will be history! Wi-Fi Sync will finally be reality. That is one benefit, the other is the awesome ability to register/initiate service on a new device without plugging into iTunes. From iOS5 forward, when you get a new device, it will sync with your iCloud account, which stores all of your pertinent data to get your new device up and running. The benefits of this, are endless, and all good from my eyes.
Ringtones. In our house, we have 4 iPhones, and quite often, when friends with iPhones visit, things get a little messier yet. When one rings, or a text tone fires off ... we all look at one another and say 'Was that you?'. iOS5 will allow complete customization of the ringtones, SMS (text) tones, etc., so there should be less confusion when there are multiple phones going off in the house or car.
Tweets. I've been slow to adopt Twitter, but I'm on the verge of moving to that platform entirely. Facebook is still my go to website, but using Twitter with automatic posting in your Facebook account (from a Tweet) ... is where I see myself going. Many people use this feature now, Twitter is there go to application, and anything they post there, automatically goes onto their FB wall. Apple realizes the power of Twitter, and every app (new word for programs) will be tightly woven with Twitter functionality. Like it or not ... Twitter is here to stay. Learn it now, or be on the backside of this up and coming service.
iMessage. THIS, has me fired up. And it really shouldn't, now that all of the wireless carriers have extrapolated all they can from the consumer in the form of texting fees ... this seems like the next (and now allowable) morph of the popular messaging service. (remember when you had to pay for each text? Then there was '200 texts for $5.00/mo, 1000 texts for $15/mo, etc. Then, AT&T came out with family texting which was unlimited for $29.99/mo - that's all free with Sprint by the way). Now, Apple has said enough is enough and it will include all messaging to ANY i - device (friends, family, etc with an iPhone, Touch, iPad, etc) ... for free. Using the data side of the carrier vs the voice side (voice side is what you make your calls on/text with/send pictures, and the data side is what carries your internet connection). iMessage is going to allow us to send pictures, videos, messages, contacts and locations over the air like SMS text messages - but it will be free. Also, you will be able to 'see' when someone is replying to you (like on FB chat, when someone is typing, you see that, knowing they are responding). Very welcome changes!
Notifications. Simply put, when you get a 'push notification' (like a text that pops up in the middle of your screen while you're doing something else .. and all it says is 'LOL'), no longer will be in the middle of what you're doing/looking at. Notifications are moving to the top of the screen, to become less obtrusive. Responding or recognizing the Notification will be on your time, not the applications. This is a welcome change as well.
Gaming. I'm not a game player, so this will be short. You can now rate apps from within Game Center and purchase other games without leaving the Game Center. You will also be able to see which games your friends are playing in real time as well.
Air Play. If you own an Apple TV box ($99), you will be able to do some very nice things with iPad/iPhone through that device. Like, mirror the display of your device onto the TV, no matter what you're doing. Imagine a large text exchange on your TV for example. A more practical application, may be showing a room full of friends picutres from your last trip, on the TV, with no wires required. You will also be able to play games on your device, wirelessly displayed on your TV for better viewing. Some games, will allow one view on the device, with a different view on the screen (like a driving game, for example, would show the track on iPad, which you're using as a steering wheel and on the TV you would have an 'in car' view, or cockpit view looking out).
Newsstand. iBooks has been awesome for me. I have become a reader, and carrying multiple books around on the iPad vs a bag full of books and magazines is one of the reasons I bought iPad in the first place. The way it is now for me though, I use Zinio (a free app which I subscribe to magazines with) for periodicals, and I use iBooks for all my personal/professional development books. Newsstand will be a replacement of my zinio service in that, news papers and magazines will come through this app, exactly like iBooks works with one nice upgrade - any subscription to a paper or magazine will automatically download to the device without your prompting (zinio requires a few clicks to get your content on the device - silly since you buy a subscription ... that's as crazy as the though of calling the publisher before they mail a copy of a magazine to your house).
Calendar and Location Based Reminders. This sounds Awesome! This is what having an iPhone is all about to me. Utilizing GPS, and tying into the calendar and reminder service on the phone, you will now be prompted, for example when you walk into the grocery store, to get items that you've put on your list. The phone will know you're there, based on GPS, and when you have a reminder (could be 'pick up present for anniverssary at Target') set up in the phone, you will get a notification, or reminder that you are to get something while you're there. Now, is this going to make us more lazy? Yes, gray matter may further fade with help of technology. But I'll take a little fade over egg in face from forgetting something I drove 20 miles to get!
Accessiblity. This is big one. Have you ever tried to type on iPad, using two thumbs? I do, my digits are long enough I can hit about every letter on the keyboard, with a slight twist of the hand to reach t, y, g, h, b, n. With iOS5, iPads keyboard will split in two, allowing a more viewable area behind where the old solid keyboard was AND no more reaching for those middle letters. Each side of iPad's screen will now contain a small keyboard that has been split right down the middle. I'm going to be a big fan of this.
New Safari Browser. Safari is great. It's stable, usually displays the page as it was meant to be viewed, etc. It is missing some features of others well known browsers though (such as Chrome, Atomic Web Browser, Opera). With iOS5, we will gain some of the features that the other browswers have been holding over Safaris head. Such as tabbed browsing. I am a big fan of tabbed browsing. It's one of the reasons I was an early adopter of Firefox on the PC and Mac computer platforms. For example (if you don't know what tabbed browsing is), when I open Chrome, or Firefox on a computer, the 'home' page is not only Facebook, but also Advocare and Google. 3 pages open, which sit in thier own tab. Clicking on a tab above the page you're used to viewing, you go right into another page (that's already loaded) of what ever you've set up. The majority of my time is spent on FB, my Advocare office, and Google. So when I open my browser, it opens 3 tabs, each of which is where I'm going anyway. This capability has not been in Safari for an iPhone or iPad - until iOS5. You can do it now via Opera or Atomic Web Browser, but soon, it will become part of the Apple experience through thier own software.
iOS5 is going to be a must have update. One fair warning though, if you are fond of Jailbreaking (replacing, or modifying Apples iOS with a customized OS), you are going to lose it for a while until the underground world comes up with a way to jailbreak iOS5. It will happen, it's never a question of 'if' so much as 'when'. It's a cat and mouse game that will probably never cease. It IS Legal to jailbreak, Apple will try and scare you away from it by saying your device will fall out of warranty as soon as you jailbreak. And it is something to consider. But just know that (as with all percieved worries), you need to know the true consequence of the 'what if' before you become threatened by big Apple. In other words, anything short of your phone just not turning on or powering up .... you can simply restore your software back to the current iOS version, and no one knows any different. Now, like I say, if your phone flat dies, and you cannot power it up ... then, when it's sent in and they get it to power up, they will know it's jailbroken. Then, only then, would they know you've decided to wander from the crowd and seek all cool underground features that either Apple, AT&T, Verizon, or who ever is in contract with Apple have decided to whithold from the masses. The masses being US - the people that spend all the $$$$ on these devices and services. I don't know about you, but I don't do anything 'watered down', it's full throttle or nothing :)
That's iOS5 in a nutshell. Don't upgrade if you're fond of your Jailbreak. I will be upgrading right away and waiting for jailbreak capability just because there is enough good stuff in 5 to lose the break for a while.
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