Randy Weber

Yep, the battery in my new iPhone 3GS isn’t so great. It’s usually needing a charge before I go to bed which means having to keep a charging cable next to my recliner or making sure to give it some juice during the day at work. Here’s what the LA Times had to say:

IPhone 3GS owners bemoan its battery life. The many capabilities of Apple’s iPhone 3GS are also a drain on the device’s battery. Buyers are finding that the device has trouble making it through a workday without a rest stop at the electrical outlet…

…Repair company IFixit.com, which specializes in Apple products… dismantled the 3GS on the day it was released and found that the phone’s battery was about 15% smaller than the one in the original iPhone.

The new model is smaller and sleeker, however, and Apple may have sacrificed some battery capacity in favor of a lighter phone, analysts said.

Considering the fact that my old iPhone’s battery was dying is the reason I upgraded, this bums me out. But I still think the 3GS is a great phone.

My first generation iPhone was a real life changer when I got it. I loved it. It did things I hadn’t considered using a phone for. It was like always having a computer with me, as well as a phone and an iPod. It served me well until the battery quit holding a charge about two weeks prior to the launch of the new iPhone 3G S. I considered this pretty good timing. So I kept my old iPhone near a charger all day and prayed it would last. It did.

I received my new iPhone at about 10am PST on the launch day. I couldn’t wait to get home to set it up. I bought the 32GB model in black.

I’ll cut to the chase. The new phone is simply evolutionary. It’s faster than my old phone. It has WAY more storage (which is pretty sweet and solves my longest running complaint about my old iPhone). And it does a few more things, but nothing that makes my jaw drop. Turns out, after a few days with the new phone, it’s simply another iPhone that holds a charge and a lot more music. Nothing wrong with that, but not necessarily worth $300. And not a life changer.

I haven’t done much with the camera. Maybe that will improve my opinion somewhat. I don’t care about video.

Also, I was hoping that the reception and call quality would improve with my new iPhone. It didn’t. AT&T still sucks! I’m not a big fan of Verizon Wireless, but if they ever offer the iPhone, I’ll leave AT&T immediately. Even if it requires an early termination fee.

Here’s a link about the 3.0 software that comes on the iPhone.

Here’s a link to a review of the 3G S hardware.

I loved my old iPhone and I love my new iPhone even more because it holds most of my music. But my advice is that if you have a functioning iPhone 3G, I’d pass on the upgrade to the 3G S. If you have a first generation iPhone, maybe it’s worth the upgrade depending upon your priorities. But try installing the 3.0 software first. If you have ANY other phone, upgrade to an iPhone NOW. I’d actually recommend the $99 3G. It’s a MAJOR bargain.

First, we had the Ray Gun Pen. Now we have the Star Trek Communicator USB VOIP Phone (also from Gizmodo). Wow! This great stuff. Everything comes in 3’s so I can’t wait to see what’s next.

This (from Gizmodo) is exceptionally cool. But $130? No way.

I hooked up the Apple TV, accessed iTunes on my Mac mini, and synced my music from my mini to the Apple TV.

Next up was installing Boxee. Not quite as easy as the instructions made it out to be, but I still got it installed and working. There was some overscan on the video but the software has a really easy way to adjust the overscan, so no problem.

Hulu worked, though it listed videos that weren’t available anymore. That was annoying. ABC.com didn’t work, nor did Fox. That’s makes Boxee a lot less useful. Didn’t try You Tube.

I like the Apple TV’s implementation of Front Row for music much better than I like Boxee. I see Boxee as my avenue to Internet video. For that it works well. I had an episode of 24 running from Hulu. It looked great.

The Apple TV and Boxee are definitely worth it.

As I said earlier, the Apple TV is a breeze to setup. I’ve since loaded all of my music onto it. It took forever to load 65GB of tunes via Wi-Fi. But it’s done and it looks and sounds great. It operates pretty much just like Front Row on my Mac mini. So it’s a keeper. I’ve disconnected my mini from the TV and taken it downstairs to the office where it will replace my ancient mini-ITX project PC. My next step is to load my photos onto the Apple TV. Then I’m going to try out Boxee.

I’m setting up my new Apple TV today to replace my Mac mini in my entertainment center. So far, it’s been a breeze to get it connected to my mini and to get it on my wireless network. I’ll let you know more once it’s all set up.

We talked about excellent customer service on 1/17. Here’s the flip-side.

We all make mistakes but doing things that are plainly unethical, that’s different. I found this on CrunchGear. Here’s what happened:

A site called The Daily Background found evidence that Belkin Bizdev guy, Michael Bayard, is paying folks 65 cents to write good things about Belkin routers.

Here’s Belkin’s response (also from CrunchGear):

We’ve acted swiftly to remove all associated postings from the Mechanical Turk system.

We’re working closely with our online channel partners to ensure that any reviews that may have been placed due to these postings have been removed.

I wouldn’t say that they fixed the problem. Yeah, they got rid of the reviews but they didn’t mention firing the employee (which I think should be a given for something this stupid and blatantly unethical), nor did they mention refunds for customers that may have purchased the products based on the false reviews.

The moral of the story - be careful what you do on the Internet.

Back in December 2006 I wrote about TiVo not keeping up in the quest to be the provider of the “sofa web.”

Om Malik at GigaOM discusses the new game consoles and the contribution they might make to Internet browsing. He refers to it as the “sofa web.”

It was announced that TiVo and Amazon Team Up - NYTimes.com. This is a positive step towards TiVo becoming part of the sofa web. I can’t wait to see more deals.

Zatz Not Funny! says YouTube on TiVo Launches. I know how crappy YouTube videos look on my iPhone. How bad do you think they’ll look on your big screen TV, especially HDTV? I could see people using this a few times and then dumping it. I say no big deal.