Product Reviews

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Yada Yada Wireless Modem for Visor

Rating: Sucks Dead Bears

The modem itself is the same old modem that everyone else is selling from novatel. The modem itself is no problem. It's the service behind it that is horrible. I set up my account just as it told me on the website. I tested it, and web based mail seemed to do just fine. Went out with the machine (since I can't access cellular packet data stuff from my house due to horrible signal coverage) and found that SMTP would just plain not work.

When I called tech support, the first weenie told me I had to reload my software. I told him that my software had nothing to do with their misconfigured SMTP relay, and could I please talk to someone with a clue. They sent me to someone who said, "how is you typing your username?" This was not good. After ONE HOUR AND 10 MINUTES worth of tech support BS, they told me that... guess what... their SMTP was misconfigured. They claimed to have "fixed it." The "fix" worked for about 15 minutes, then unworked again.

I wrote to the tech support person directly (otherwise you get an automated message that includes URLs of information that isn't always related to your query) and asked what was up. He told me I had to change my SMTP server because their default one just didn't work. Uh, ok. Too late. I'm sending it back. Asked for an RMA number and have received no response after a week's waiting.

UPDATE: Make that two weeks of waiting. No email responses. Resorted to the telephone at 10:00 AM 4/17. They promised that someone would get back to me with an RMA number right away. Will report when they finally do. I have the feeling I am going to have to make MANY calls.

Recommendation: STAY AWAY

OmniSky Wireless Modem for Handspring Visor

Rating: Yeah, this works

After the bozos at yadayada, I tried first emailing Omnisky's tech support to see if a human answered rather than a spew of URLs. A human did indeed answer the mail. This is good. So, I purchased it.

The manual was pretty good. The website was pretty good. I signed up for service, entered all the right stuff, and then got into the car for the trek to wherever I could get a signal. Seems that the CDPD stuff is way low priority on the cell usage charts, so I often get a "system busy" signal, etc. This is really annoying, but it's not Omnisky's fault.

Anyway, soon as I got a signal, email worked both ways, web browsing worked, even AIM worked (although the software crashes on a regular basis... not Omnisky's software FYI

Recommendation: I'll keep it

Mac OS X

Rating: Needs Work

The good news is that it multitasks, and doesn't crash the whole machine when an application goes down. The bad news is that the "classic environment" under which you have to run all non OS X applications, often fails silently, and/or crashes, taking all OS 9 applications with it. I didn't like that part.

I also didn't like the much more difficult means of accessing appleshare and printers. Perfectly good configurations for OS 9 just don't work on OS X. I am unable to access OS 9 machines most of the time. Maybe it's me, but isn't this supposed to be "easy?"

Recommendation: Wait for the next rev.

Rio 800 Extreme

Recommendation: I LIKE this

This is a nice little unit. Has 380 someodd megs of memory for MP3s and all. I most certainly wish that there was more storage space (since I like very high quality MP3s at about 320 k) but this is really nice, light, and useful. The only problems are...1) there are no 128 meg spare backpacks available right now, so if you want to use multiple storage units, you're stuck with 64 meg. Also, the current 128 meg units don't seem to have enough battery capacity to power the machine for long periods of time. My last test was 2 hours. However, I'm testing it again right now after a very long charge.

Also, I really wish that there were high quality portable headphones available. The ones with the unit aren't great. Oh well, what can I say? Such is life it seems.