Two days ago, I checked the T-Mobile website (since SunCom was recently bought out) and saw that unlimited mobile internet was only $5.99/month.  Naturally, I immediately signed up.  I was told that it could take 2-48 hours for T-Mobile Web to begin working, which confused me, but not a big deal.

When it finally began working (on my way home from the Carolina vs Arkansas game – don’t worry, I was a passenger), it had been about 7 hours.

So far, these are my thoughts.  It’s a handy service to have, because I can now check my Facebook, GMAIL, and ESPN Fantasy Basketball team while riding the bus to class.  This sounds cheesy, but it really cuts down on time (and distraction time) when I get to my computer and need to do work. 

It is mobile web, however, and it has it’s drawbacks.  So far, I’ve been using soley sites formatted for mobile devices, although I have checked a few blogs of friends of mine.  It seems that Blogspot automatically formats just the text entries for the phone, which makes it really convenient.  Wordpress, however, does not. 

The connection and speeds aren’t fantastic, but for a slider cell phone (note: NOT a smartphone), I can’t complain.  I get almost instant access to scores, news, email, and Facebook from anywhere I can get a cell phone signal.  Plus, it’s all less than half of my monthly texting bill.

As you will soon find out, I conduct periodic reviews on software and gadgets that I acquire. As I am low on cash, resources, and influence, this is not very often. Recently, however, T-Mobile bought out SunCom, and I was due for a phone upgrade. Naturally, I wanted the HTC Dream, or G1, with Android, but I neither have $200 spare dollars, nor do I think the G1 is quite ready.

So I got the Samsung t819.  I have never owned a Samsung phone, but I have heard relatively good things about them.  This phone is a “slider” phone with a 1.3 mega pixel camera, 30MB internal memory, and exansion for a micro-SD card.

If I had paid money for this phone, I would almost certainly be more harsh in my reviews.  However, I got it for free, and so I can’t say that I am altogether dissapointed.  In fact, the phone has been quite good, despite a few odd features and non-features.

Here is an example of a picture taken with the phone’s camera.

What I Like:

• Micro-SD Expansion – I bought a 2GB Micro-SD card for the phone, which gives me ample room for pictures, music, and videos.
• Large display – the display is 176 x 220 pixels, and the colors look great.  Compared to other phones I have had (Motorola Razr V3, Motorola L2, Nokia 6030, Palm Treo), I would say that this phone is perhaps the best in direct sunlight.
• Small size – When closed, the phone is only about 3″ x 1.5″, only a little bigger than a closed Razr.
• 1.3 MegaPixel camera – This camera is different than many slider phone cameras because it is located on the back of the bottom layer of the phone, which means that you can take pictures without opening the phone.
• Music Player – The mp3 player on the phone is very nice, with visual effects, good playback, etc.

What I Don’t Like:

• Samsung menu – The menu on this phone is not customizable by way of colors or order of appearance.  The phone does not try to show off the great display, as the menu colors are all dark greys and blacks, with the exception of the pink highlighted items.  The pink is also mandatory and cannot be changed.
• Phone Memory – The phone’s internal memory is a generous 30MB, but you are limited in what you can do with it.  For example, I am a big text messager, and I generally send/receive more than 50 texts per day.  With the t819, they store automatically to your SIM card, and there is no way to change this.  After the 30 messages, the “full” icon appears, even though you can keep receiving and storing to the phone.  After 200 texts, however, the phone memory is also full.  To me, this doesn’t make sense.  I bought a 2GB memory card so that I could store texts.  However, the phone does not allow this, nor does it have an auto cleanup funtion.
• Call quality – Ok at best, but most calls sound muffled.

All in all, I am still satisfied with the phone.  I will update this post if I have any major problems later on.

As many of you probably know, OpenOffice 3 came out a few days ago.  The demand was so high that it was temporarily almost impossible to find a decent download link.  In fact, it took me 3 separate tries to finally get the full 150MB download.

Overall, I am impressed.  OpenOffice 2 had a lot of quirks and basic design flaws that disappointed me, so I was using AbiWord on a regular basis.  However, OpenOffice 3 has made dramatic improvements.  As always, this program runs smoothly and generally without problems.  However, it is by no means a “fun” application to run.  It seems almost a simply generic version of Word.

The thing that I immediatly noticed about OO3 was the improvements in design.  In previous versions, I have been unsatisfied with the low-res icon and basic styles that are reminiscent of early 2000 applications.  The logo, however, has been replaced, and while it is still not perfect, it is an improvement.

The menu styles, too, have improved, though the overrall feel is still nothing special.

My other major problem with OO2 was that, whenever I would begin the prompted update, the entire program would crash. This would cause me to temporarily lose my data until I could recover it with Sun’s built-in recovery tool. While this never resulted in me losing any precious data, this is unacceptable in desktop software.

Other than that, I have been very pleased with OpenOffice 3. Other than the widely used Writer, the suite has other “Office-inspired” apps such as Presentation, Database, Spreadsheet, etc. These are quite good as well, though I have spent the majority of time with the Writer.

Yes, I have waited a few weeks to write my Firefox 3 review.  However, this has kept me from what would be my initial gush over the cool features, smooth interface, and smart url bar.  Firefox 3 is indeed an improvement on the best web browser in many ways, though it falls short in places as well.

First let’s talk about the good things.  In just the few weeks I have been using FF3, I am already dependant on some features.  One of these is the smart url bar.

While most browsers bring up your recently vistited URL’s when you type, the FF3 bar will bring up recently visted sites with the same address, key words in the site’s description, etc.  For example, if I were to type “ryan bowen” into the address bar, i get a dropdown list of sites that I’ve visited with that keyword (FaceBook, SpreadFirefox, NBA, CockyTalk, etc).  This makes it much easier to find sites, and you will no longer have to search through the web history.

Another new feature that I absolutely LOVE is a little harder to explain.  It also may have gone unnoticed to you thusfar, though it is very neat, even though not incredibly useful.  Let’s say you want to add cover art to one of your iTunes albums.  Generally speaking, you probably Google Image search the coverart, then drag and drop it into the “Get Info” -> “Album Art” box.  With FF3, it drags a slightly dulled image of whatever you are dragging with the mouse.  As I said, this is difficult to explain, but it is a nifty feature indeed.

The last feature I’ll talk about has come in really useful to me.  Many times, I’ll have 5 or 6 tabs open, and I’ll get called away from my computer for a while.  I don’t want to leave a window open since I don’t know when I’ll get back to it, but then again I don’t want to bookmark all my tabs before I quit.  Thanks to FF3, I don’t have to.  Now, when you try to close a window with multiple tabs, it gives you an option to “Save and Quit”, so when you re-open, all your tabs come back!  Ingenious!

Now, I do have a few issues with Firefox 3.  For one, although it doesn’t do it as much now, Firefox would crash constantly when I first go it – I’m talking 3 or 4 times a day.  I have a brand new computer, it runs multiple apps flawlessly, but Firefox would crash ALL THE TIME.

Another problem I have is with the Add-Ons.  Some of my favorite extensions aren’t compatible with FF3.  I know that isn’t Mozilla’s fault, but still.

I also think there should be a way to add a FaviCon to your favorites for sites that don’t automatically have one.  For half of my favorites, I have to look at a yellow star.  It’s much easier to navigate through my favorites by looking at icons rather than reading.  That sounds incredibly lazy, but it’s true.

So, the bottom line is, I like Firefox.  I think security will be an issue in the months to come, because as it gets more popular, more hackers will target it.  However, it remains the most secure, customizable browser out there, and I highly recommend it.