Yeah.  So much for that.  :-/

I went into the Radio Shack in the mall & looked at what they had, talked with the sales person, and wound up going with the Samsung WEP850 partly because it had the two things I wanted, partly because it looked the most comfortable of the different ones they had, and partly because it was on sale at the time.  In an unrelated note, I went to Radio Shack because I knew they were out in CA as well and if something went wrong, or I got out there and wanted to exchange it for a different one, I could.

Things went swimmingly.  I talked with Mom on it for a long while and she didn’t have any problems hearing or understanding me.  And on my end, I didn’t have any trouble hearing her over the car noise — which was a concern as that was an issue with some wired headsets I’d used in the past.  (Granted, those cost one seventh what this one did.)

Jump forward a few months and I’ve ran into a few people here and there who’ve complained either about not being able to hear me or that my voice was sounding garbled and distorted.  All the while, I’m hearing them perfectly clearly.

A few of the people who’ve said things have been on Sprint cell phones.  (I’m on AT&T.)  But some have been on office phones (behind a digital switchboard on digital, IP-type, phones).  And at least one of the Sprint people has said that sometimes I’m just fine, but other times I’m not.  When I’m not, we hang up and one of us calls the other right back.  A lot of times that fixes it.

So.  I’m at a loss.  I think the voice quality of this headset is great.  The volume is loud enough (at least when it’s paired with my HTC Tilt 2) for me to hear the other caller, even with some environmental sounds.  And (when I have a good signal) the caller can hear me clearly.

But, as a result of the trouble I’ve had, I never use it when making an important business call.  Which sucks, because most of the time I’m needing my hands to take notes and the phone’s microphone is really directional — move the phone a half inch and they can’t hear me — so I’m left using speaker quite a lot.

Moving past the call quality, for a moment, and into functionality and you’ll find a different story.

The manual says to press the “talk” button (on the headset) to answer a call that’s coming in.  OK.  That works.  It says to press the same button to hang up the call that you’re currently on.  OK.  That works.  But, wait.  It also says that while you’re on a call, press that same button to take a second call that’s coming in.  Yeah.  That doesn’t work so great.  I’ve had it hang up on the first caller without answering the second.

You use the “talk” button — holding it down for a long period of time, instead of a quick press — to turn the headset on or off.  That works, but it seems to me that the delay in turning on is extremely too long — it’s about 8-10 seconds and it’d seem that 1 or 2 at the most would do.

This same “talk” button is also supposed to be used to switch between phones, if you have the headset paired with two phones.  I just can’t see why they tried making one button do so much.  Remembering all that the one thing does, or hold it down X-long for this and Y-long for that, seems to make it needlessly complicated for the user whereas simply adding a second button (or heck, toggle switch) would be easier — especially for the switching phone bit.  Want to switch phones, flip the toggle switch just seems to make more cognitive sense to me.

Other than the “talk” button, there’s one other button on the headset.  That is supposed to control volume.  Press it on the one side to increase, the other to decrease.  I’ve done that, but haven’t found that the volume level has changed at all.  Pressing both sides at once does actually turn the indicator light on or off, as the manual indicates it should.

Battery life is good.  I’ve not, to my knowledge, had it actually die on me while using it.  But I keep it charged — if I’ve used it, or just had it on for the day, I’ll charge it, just in case.

Lastly, it’s still just as comfortable as it was when I first got it.  If anything, it’s more comfortable now that I’ve gotten used to having it in my ear.

So.  Do I recommend you get this headset?  Nope.  Do I recommend that you don’t ever consider it?  Nope to that as well.  Am I going to run out and replace it?  Heck, no!  I don’t have that type of money.  This thing cost around $70!

In the end, it works for me, not as good as I’d liked and doesn’t seem to fully work as the manual indicates, but it does let me use my phone in a hands-free manner… some of the time.  And that’s really all I wanted.  I probably really would’ve been better off just getting the same cheap $20-$25 headset that my manager (at the time) got.  But I figured that something newer would be better.  Yeah… Perhaps not so.

The plugin gives a page, rather poorly laid out if you ask me, but a page nonetheless that allows you to select at the user and category level who has access to what categories.  Why “poorly”?  Imagine a grid with categories along the top, users down the side, and checkboxes at the intersections and you’ll have exactly how that page was laid out.  Now, this isn’t a bad thing if you don’t have that many categories, but do have lots of users.  But if you have lots of categories, then it’ll wind up with you scrolling horizontally — and that is never a good idea for a web page.

But, that’s just a design issue… and all of us web designers are different, and have different ideas of what is the “right” way to do something.

The reason that I’ve uninstalled this plugin (and temporarily moved all the posts I’m hiding to “draft” status until I can figure out a better solution) is that every time I added a new category, I’d forget that I had to go down to a different section of the admin interface and enable the admin user (me) to have access to that new category.  I’m sorry, but shouldn’t the admin have access to every category on the blog they’re administering?  Oh, and shouldn’t something that adds access permissions to a category enhance or extend the Categories page?  Or at the very least, stick it’s config page in the Posts section?  Hmmm?  Ya think?

So… I’m back to the drawing board, wondering why I had switched from Joomla — which actually has user access levels built-in — to WordPress.  Oh yeah… Joomla sucks as a blogging tool… but that’ll have to wait for another review.

No such luck.

For some bloody reason which I’m baffled by, but don’t feel like investigating further (I figure 30+ minutes is enough time for someone else’s F-up), Simply Exclude is just not saving my changes.  I go into the same page (on JonWarrenPhotography.com) that I did on MyHumbleAbode.com, make the same changes, hit “save”, and whereas I get the note saying the changes have been saved, when I check the blog they’re not saved and if I go back to that same page, the changes haven’t been saved.  WTF.

Version check.  Yep, both sites are running on the same hosting platform (e.g., DB, OS), both sites are using the same version of WordPress, and both sites had the same version of the Simply Exclude plugin installed.  No dice.

Manual DB intervention didn’t work, since the author’s using some sort of byte-offset to read the options — instead of creating a much more organized method of using a separate table or multiple options, everythings been dumped into one big ole string of text — which is highly annoying.  So copy-and-pasting the chunk of it that’s missing from one site’s DB to the other’s didn’t work.

Uninstall/Reinstall?  No such luck there either.  First off, it didn’t delete the DB entry during the uninstall process.  Secondly, it didn’t start saving stuff after I’d reinstalled it (and it recreated that options entry in the DB).

So, I’m done.  I’ll keep it installed on here (MyHumbleAbode.com) since it’s working (oh, and it’s still saving changes here, tested that too).  But over on JonWarrenPhotography.com, I’ve uninstalled it and am looking for another option.

(ha ha time) Since it’s written by someone named Paul Menard, perhaps he’s been too busy racing in NASCAR to fix the plugin.  (No, I seriously doubt that it’s the same person.)

Update:  I found an alternative that works, so I’m ditching Simply Exclude (SE) from both sites and going with Advanced Category Excluder (ACE).  The only drawback to this change, that I can see at the present, is that ACE doesn’t support tag-based exclusion and SE does.  But since all my Twitter feed posts are stuck into a separate category, I don’t need that functionality (at this time).

Oddly enough, it doesn’t feel that much different than the last version that I’d used (Pocket PC 2000). In fact, the “Today” screen’s config is the same — and can be made to look exactly the same. Thank goodness HTC (the manufacturer of the phone on which I’m running WM6.5) came up with something “snazzy looking” that they call TouchFLO 3D so I don’t have a phone that looks like it’s running a 9-year old OS. Come on Microsoft, I know you didn’t get something that perfect on your first try — so how about tweaking things around?

There is absolutely no user-specified organizational abilities for the location of programs in the “start” page. That’s something that’s beginning to bug me a bit, but I’ll (begrudgingly) get used to it. There’s “move to top” and “move down”, but those just seem to move things to the top of the page, thus “reshuffling” (resorting based on some unknown internal algorithm) all the rest of the programs. I’ve resigned myself to just trying to memorize things locations and to try not to add or do anything that’ll possibly reorganize things. What I’d like to see is a way to drag programs around to organize them the way that I see fit — the same way that I can with programs on my Windows [XP or 7] desktop.

I’ve not (yet) downloaded and installed a mobile regedit, but give it time… I seem to recall doing that (to fix some obscure problem) on my Aero. I did a quick search and it looked as if such a tool still exists — the same one, I think. Sheesh, 8-9 years isn’t seeming all that long ago all of a sudden.

The updated versions of the mobile office suite of tools haven’t yet been touched by me, but they’re there if and when I need them. (There’s not all that much storage on this phone, so I’m waiting for my new MicroSD card to arrive.)

The updated contacts tool is nice. But I don’t think there’s really all that much that’s changed from that earlier version other than the addition of an ability to link an entry to a Facebook profile — but that really seems to only pull in the profile’s avatar from Facebook. A true “sync” would be nice, where it updated the contact information (if available) in your address book with that information provided on people’s Facebook profiles. I figure they’d keep that info more updated than me. After all, it is their info. Thinking about this a bit more, I’m thinking that perhaps the layout has been tweaked to “improve” the display of the info that is available and more commonly often needed.

Microsoft Transcriber seems to work about the same as it did back when I installed it on my Aero shortly after I got that PDA. And whereas it does a good job, I’m a wee bit out of practice of writing on a touch screen. You can’t write as quickly as you can with pen and paper. You need to remember to wait for the device’s computer to catch up with you. But I like it better than any other on-screen input options. This phone has a full “qwerty” keyboard that is nice, big, and easy to use that I do make use of for certain things (like passwords).

It looks as if they have improved the (although this might be more hardware manufacturer than OS) ability of the device to retain it’s touch screen calibration. I seem to recall having to recalibrate the pointer on that Aero quite often. I’ve done it once (just in case) and I’m pretty sure I didn’t really have to — although it did seem as if the vertical was off by a little bit before I recalibrated things.

All-in-all I must say that things seem quite a lot similar to how they were with that 2000 release, which isn’t that bad of a thing — I know my way around thanks to it’s similarity. However, I’m somewhat disappointed that things don’t look more different.

It’s an alpha release… and it’s a damn good thing that it is. It looks like it might have potential to take on Mobile IE and Mobile Opera, but at the moment it didn’t even resize to fit my screen. That kinda makes it unusable.

If you have a phone running on a different OS you might have better luck, but I’d hold off even bothering looking at this browser until they get it to a Beta release. And that’s a fairly sad thing for me to say, since I’m really wanting a mobile version of Firefox. (Fennec is the code name for just such a browser.)

Last week, Wednesday or Thursday I think, I carelessly didn’t pay attention getting into my car after work and shut my phone (that was in my jacket pocket) in the door with enough force to pop the battery out bending a plastic support piece. The outer display screen was completely shot — still lit up, but nothing was displayed. The inner display was only about a third shattered, but that third was more than half of the area used to display info. So I quickly went online and ordered a new phone.

I had looked at the HTC Tilt 2 (also written as Tilt2) a time or two in the past, but decided that it wasn’t “100%” what I wanted (probably due to the price) but it was “close”. So, since that was the only phone that AT&T offered that was anywhere close to what I was wanting, I ordered it.

I’ve not been as disappointed as I thought I might be.

The photo display program seems to ignore the orientation of the phone, opting instead to try & display everything as if I’m holding the thing on it’s side. That sucks for vertically oriented shots, as they’re then displayed with their long edge being on the phone’s short edge.

Error reporting (on crashed programs) was turned off, but it just popped up… so there’s a bug.

The file explorer doesn’t appear to have access to the microSD card and if there’s one in the phone, Windows 7 wasn’t letting me get to the phone’s memory itself… just the microSD card in the phone. However, without the microSD card in the phone, Windows 7 was able to detect the phone and has installed the necessary drivers… Now I’m able to get to both the phone & the storage card, but the storage card is no longer mapped as a drive. :shrugs: Whatever, all I wanted was access to both and I have it in some fashion at least.

For some reason, Opera was set to the default browser, even though IE was on the device. (Personally I don’t like IE, but Opera has pissed me off as a company due to their whining to the EU about just Microsoft… hell, Apple and Mozilla are both giving away free browsers and that’s basically the root of Opera’s bitching.) Firefox Mobile (aka Fennec) sucks, but that’ll have to be another review.

TouchFLO 3D — which I don’t know if it’s a Windows Mobile or an HTC component — is neat, but not really all that useful and it doesn’t use the “system” wallpaper. But it’s what I’m using, because the alternatives (either the “Windows Default” or just displaying items, like Date, Calendar, etc.) aren’t growing on me at the moment. (I can’t find where to configure what’s included in the “Windows Default” selection of programs, and the other looks like my last PocketPC did about 10 years ago and I want something “new”.)

The touch-screen works pretty good, even with my big ole fingers, but I’ve found myself using the stylus more.

The stylus that came with the device (and fits nicely in the device) is a wee bit short, so I’ve found myself using a stylus from that older Pocket PC PDA (a Compaq Aero 1550) since it’s about 3/4-inch longer and more than twice as heavy (the phone came w/ a spare).

The new phone is (guessing here) about twice as heavy as my old phone (a Samsung A707) and so that’s taking some getting used to. As for dimensions, the (new) HTC is about 1/2-inch wider and about 3/4-inch longer, but the same thickness as the (old) Samsung. So I’ll probably wind up getting some sort of belt-clip for it, but we’ll see how it goes for a while.

The screen is, in a word, nice. It appears that it is 16.7-million colors, but I don’t really know since HTC is kinda mum on that topic on their site. AT&T claims it has 16.7-million colors, but 3 different review sites all claimed it only had 65k-colors. Yeah, it’s got more than 65k, that’s for darn sure.

Google was nice enough to work out with Microsoft so that us die-hard Google users can sync our calendar, contacts, and mail through the Microsoft ActiveSync tool on our Windows Mobile devices. That went slowly, but smoothly. If you’re a Google Apps user, you’ll have to go into your Google Apps control panel and enable that ability before you try, or else you’ll get an error. I found that I needed to sync a couple of times before things were all sync’d up, probably mostly because I’d pulled my old contacts from my old phone via the SIM card — which cleared a sh**load of info.

The contacts app on the phone is nice enough, it even has a sync w/ Facebook and is able to use the Facebook pictures for your phonebook… but it only does that with Facebook. If you’re wanting the same thing with MySpace or (even better) Twitter, you’re SOL. One problem that I’ve been having w/ the contacts app, however, is that I keep accidentally hitting “call”. Perhaps the wording or position is slightly off how my brain is thinking it should be… or perhaps I’m expecting a confirmation prompt instead of it just doing it. So, if you’ve gotten a single-ring call from me, SORRY.

Wi-fi seems to be a bit finicky on this phone. It also seems to take freakin forever to connect and if the phone “goes to sleep” it kills the wi-fi connection, thus needing another eternity to connect when you wake the phone back up. That’s not really all that big of a deal, but if you’re setting the thing up for the first time, you’ll probably want to keep it plugged in and to adjust the sleep time-out. I know I’ve had problems with my Windows XP laptop in the past where it just seems to not want to connect, but that’s been a fairly rare problem. I’ll have to play around a bit and see if I can find a “solution” as I feel it should “just connect” if there’s a full “4 bars” of wi-fi signal. On a lighter note, it wasn’t difficult at all setting the WPA passphrase for my secured network.

Battery-life isn’t something that I’ve really concerned myself with — yet. Why? Because I’ve been using it a whole lot more than I foresee myself actually using it during this whole get-my-data-on-it time.

Mobile Remote Desktop is just plain cool. It works even. I mean, how cool is it to be able to remote into your home box from your phone.

All-in-all, I’ve got to say that I think I’ll be able to live with this device for the next 2-years w/o a whole lot of bitching. That’s not to say that I’m thrilled or annoyed with it… it’s just to say that I’m having a huge learning-curve/adjustment-period.

I will say this, though, I’m seeing a few things that my previous phone had that I’ll be missing. But those’ll probably be quickly forgotten.

Would I recommend this phone? Maybe yes, maybe no. The jury’s still out on that one.

Update: I forgot to mention that the camera on this phone is only 3.2mp. There are lots of other phones out (some only overseas at the moment, though) that have 5mp or even 8mp cameras. And there’s no flash (which doesn’t bother me all that much, since I really don’t like flashes, but since the low-light abilities suck, a flash is needed).

Update2: Google Calendar only seems to be syncing your “primary” calendar via ActiveSync, and there wasn’t any place I saw in the config to specify other calendars. That stinks if you’re like me and use multiple calendars to keep (for example) your personal and business appointments separate.

Update3: I definitely left off a big part of this phone: user input. The keyboard slides out on the side and is the nicest cell phone keyboard I’ve ever used. The keys are nice and big and there’s plenty of space between them so you don’t accidentally hit the wrong key. The only problem I’ve noticed with it so far is that the key with the ‘ and 1 on it seems to require a slight bit more pressure than the others.

Also, the on-screen versions of the keyboard are pretty easy to use, but I’ve mis-typed a few times when using my fingers.

And the best part of this is that the phone — since it’s Windows Mobile — has the absolutely lovely Transcriber program available as a selectable input method. Transcriber is a handwriting recognition software tool that recognizes printed and cursive and is pretty easy to use — and can be customized if you’re finding it doesn’t recognize this-or-that letters in your handwriting.

Update4: This is very weird, but the file explorer is now showing my storage card — after I’d deleted everything off it via my Windows 7 computer. :shrugs: