Author: Cody

I tried to download quicktime 7 today from apple.com and noticed that the quicktime page only offers you the option of downloading the latest quicktime bundled with itunes. iTunes takes over file associations and media setting without asking which drives me crazy.

I’ve located a link to the quicktime standalone player:

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/standalone.html

I think that intentionally making it hard to download the standalone player for quicktime is a slimy thing to do, reminds me of the RealOne player a few years ago.

Four years ago when I moved home from Montreal the only way I could use my Rogers cell phone in PEI was to drive to the other side of town on a hill so I could get 1 bar of analog signal, just enough to check my voicemail. Sadly in 2005, not much has changed.

Sure I can get a digital GSM signal now, heck I can even get 1 bar of signal in my house (Of course my aliant phone gets 5 bars) but the coverage still sucks and is far behind the coverage my aliant phone gets. It doesn’t even work in my office. I would guess that at least 50% of the island isn’t covered at all which is pretty pathetic given the geographic size of the island.

How can you expect to charge similar rates to your competition when you don’t even provide 50% of the service area that they do. I guess the thing that REALLY ticks me off is that the sales guy said that coverage on the island was complete from tip to tip. I guess it’s my fault for trusting a slimy sales guy. Good thing I followed my instinct and didn’t opt for a contract. Anyway, off to cancel my service and burn my SIM card. I wonder if they would be happy with 50% of the total bill?

UPDATE April 2010: This post is now 5 years old and I no longer live in PEI. I would suggest that anyone thinking about purchasing Rogers Wireless cellular service in PEI should talk to a current Rogers Wireless customer in the area you plan to be most of the time. A lot can change in a wireless network in 5 years and the last time I was in PEI with my company phone (Rogers Blackberry Perl) I had coverage everywhere we went in PEI. I can’t speak to the customer service aspect as I don’t deal with them but in general I find all telephone companies have horrible customer service so I would assume that is still the standard.

Want cheap, good music from a company that isn’t evil?

SSH shells on the treo 600 with PSSH is not exactly something I would want to be doing all day long but it’s definatly usable.

My previous laptop + TDMA/CDMA phone experiences have been so slow that it was like ssh via carrier pigeon. I haven’t tried CDMA2 or 1X as Aliant calls it but I assume it’s similar in speed to GPRS. I would compare GPRS speed and latency to the average 33.6 K dialup session. I’m sure using the Treo as a wireless modem for my laptop would result in a usable connection on the road but the Rogers Wireless data fees are insane. $40 a month for 3 megabytes of data per month works out to a dollar for every 76 kilobytes of data.

On another note, what ever happened to laptop IR ports? Every notebook I’ve ever owned has had one and now when I finally get a device I’d like to use with the IR port my new Dell doesn’t have one!