Smartphones and rural life.

Work no longer funds phones for us directly, instead, we purchase our own phones and plans, and they reimburse us a portion through a monthly stipend. So, time to move up to my own personal smartphone. What to choose, what to choose.

A big factor, for me anyway, is coverage out at the cottage. Manitoba has a very sparse population density, at around 3.5 people/km^2. However, with a total population in the province of 1.2 million or so, and 60% of those living in one city alone, cell phone coverage outside of the city can become... dodgy at best. Now that Rogers is using the same cell towers as MTS, I at least have the choice of going with Rogers.

So: Blackberry, iPhone, or Android?

I had a Blackberry for a while, and I didn't particularly like it. Unless you're running Blackberry Enterprise Server somewhere, integration with apps is poor. They *finally* had to start supporting iCal calendaring, simply because everyone else did, but they got pulled into it kicking and screaming. Their reliance, as well, on gimicky scroll wheels, tiny trackballs, etc. also didn't impress me. I wanted a nice, easy to wipe touch screen.

I have an iPod touch, and I like Apples products. However, I haven't used it as much as I'd like, simply because I've got 30 gigs of music ripped, nicely indexed, with scanned album covers, in OGG Vorbis format. Which, of course, Apple won't support, because it doesn't fit in with their iTunes strategy. Also, I don't manage my music under iTunes, since I can't purchase a copy of it for Linux, and I really don't feel like having to purchase a Microsoft Windows license so I can run it in a VirtualBox on my GNU/Linux machine so I can purchase iTunes so I can listen to my damned music the way Apple wants me to.

Android, of course, is GNU/Linux. I like GNU/Linux. A lot.

The choice was clear.

MTS' Android is the Motorola Spice. A small 3" screen, 3 MP camera. 256 Megs ram. 528 Mhz processor. Android 2.1. Bleh.

Rogers? Their "top of the line" Android device is the Samsung Galaxy S Captivate. 4.2" screen. 5 MP camera. 512 Megs ram. 1 Ghz processor. Android 2.2 with upgrade to 2.3 coming soon. Yum.

No contest. Sorry, MTS.

And the best part? There's a Cell tower going up right across from the cottage, probably about 600 or so meters away. So, whenever it goes online, data and voice access should be fine.

New netbook and drive

My old Acer Aspire One, which I used constantly, finally decided to pack it in. It was one of the originals, with the very slow custom SSD board.

I picked up one of the new D255's, which uses a 250 Gig 2.5 inch laptop drive. Now, for me, the entire point of a netbook is that it's rugged: I shouldn't have to worry about head crashed from bopping it around that much. Since I take the little netbook with me everywhere, this is a concern.

So, I picked up an OCZ Vertex II drive. Well, holey moley! GNU/Linux boots very very quickly on it, sub 10 seconds, and shutdown's even faster. Suspend and resume is super fast too: about a second for each.