I ditched the OQO
Well, not completely, but my love affair with it has faded. It fits my needs for a lightly packed weekend trip and it is something I’ll keep for that and for using as a car computer, but I stopped carrying it daily. Even given it’s pocketable size it’s a tad large to be in your pocket all the time.
In spite of this I was still considering upgrading to the new model for more RAM and the better video performance, but their customer support has fallen through the floor. Given the unreliability of these machines, that is a huge issue, a showstopper for me. I won’t be upgrading because of it. Personally, I think OQO is faltering as a company. I believe they are trying to find an exit with a buyer now.
What do I use daily now? Well, I’m trying out a Blackberry Curve 8330 (Verizon had a two for $49 deal when I re-upped and that fit perfectly with my tightwad side…although they did soak me an additional $30 a mo for the unlimited net for it). I’ve never been one for “smart phones”, to me a phone was just to make calls and use as a modem. I didn’t even use the contacts list in my last phone. As for Blackberry, in particular, I’d always though that Blackberries were just glorified phones with a PIM, address book, SMS, and perhaps some limited Internet via their proxy. I didn’t know they can now do what they do.
So far I am impressed. I have a SSH client to manage servers with in an emergency (screen is a tad small for any real work on it, but it’s ok for emergency troubleshooting and even managing accounts), I have my e-mail (although I refuse to use Blackberry’s push service and instead use LogicMail, the privacy side of me does not want someone in the middle), I have my real time server monitoring alerts, and I have my web access, in fact I have full net access. That is all I really need when out daily.
It also has some things that I do not really need, but I like them. Pandora is something I use a lot. It’s Internet radio and my first foray into it. I just plug the phone into the line in jack on my truck then start Pandora and I’m good to go, it even pauses the music if the phone rings. Slacker is another internet radio app I installed and like. No need for a Sirius subscription anymore (I think as phone networks and Internet radio progress that it means the death of satellite radio, unless they morph or merge). I also find myself using Viigo a lot for RSS feeds.
BTW: If you are using a smartphone and Opera Mini, please be aware that everything goes through a proxy in Norway and that it operates as a man in the middle for SSL. Obviously this is not good from a security or privacy standpoint. Don’t use Opera Mini for anything like online banking, Paypal, etc. where you really want end to end encryption.
So I have only had the Blackberry for a couple of weeks now which means it is too early to find out if it has staying power, but I do expect it does, at least for a while. Now I have to WAP enable Cotse somehow as LogicMail, though functional, is very basic. Either that or it’s time to learn to code in Java and write my own mail app for it, which I am considering.
