So, since I work for a helpdesk (and have for almost a year now), I’d like to point out something that bothers the hell out of me whenever I encounter it.

Why the FUCK do people think that becoming hostile and unhelpful on the phone will make anything easier?

If someone suggests a troubleshooting step that may resolve the issue, why do you think that answering “No, I refuse to touch that piece of equipment” will get anything done? What do you think it will accomplish besides pissing off your technician?

I can understand being a bit frustrated (especially if someone’s having you repeat steps you’ve done before to no avail), but just tell the person on the phone that you’ve already tried something if that’s the case. Don’t tell someone you refuse to do something because you’ve never done it before. The technician on the other end of the phone sometimes does know what they’re talking about.

So, here’s the review. It’s a bit later than I expected to post it, but I decided to give the phone some time to let me not only get used to it but to let it run more than just ‘out of the box’ to see how it goes after some use. So here we are, 2 months later, and I’m finally posting this review.
This phone is great. I’m loving the Android OS on the phone, it’s nice and slick and easy to navigate. Finding functions and options inside the OS is intuitive and easy to do. The phone functionality is nice and easy, though once or twice I have encountered the odd ‘echo’ effect described by a couple people, but it seems rare for me and doesn’t really detract from the call quality.

The large amount of applications available on the Android Market makes it extremely easy to find an application to do almost anything, from post to Twitter to playing games. A good majority of the applications out there are free, though some of them come in a ‘lite’ free version and a paid version, where the paid version usually has a couple extra features and isn’t ad-supported. The ads themselves though are usually placed out of the way so they don’t interfere with functionality at all, which is a kudos to the application developers in thinking about the user interface function for that.

The only problem I’ve encountered with the phone so far was the result of an application that had started to crash portions of the OS, which was simply resolved by removing the faulty application, returning everything to normal. Nothing else has given me problems yet.

Battery life is excellent, giving me an entire day on a battery charge even while using applications like FourSquare and ITweet on a fairly regular basis. This is doubly impressive when I’m at work and I’ve got absolutely poor signal, which eats up even more battery as the phone’s constantly reaching out to keep a connection to a tower, and it’s constantly flipping back and forth between 1X and 3G. I usually take it off the charger at 7am, and it doesn’t go back on the charger til about 11:30 pm, at which point it’s still got between 20 and 40 percent battery life still remaining. On the days where I’m at home and I’ve got constantly good signal, I’ll usually plug it in at night while it still has around 70 percent battery life remaining, so battery life is phenomenal.

The only major gripe I have about the hardware itself is the keyboard. Whoever designed this keyboard either had really tiny fingers that were really sensitive or someone miscounted in a ‘key height’ category somewhere, because the keyboard is pretty much flat. There is barely any definition between the keys so you tend to mis-key quite often. The on-screen keyboard, especially in landscape mode, more than makes up for this deficiency though, and I find myself using it all the time.

All in all, the Droid is an amazing phone. It does lack some of the functionality that something like Windows Mobile might have in terms of dealing with a more corporate environment, but it does support Exchange functionality for email and (I presume) calendar functions. The phone is more suited to the mobile ‘networking’ people to me than a corporate entity, but I’m sure if some corporation out there really wanted to use the Android platform that they would build their own apps to do what they needed to do on the phones.

I heartily recommend the Droid to anyone looking for a new phone.

Electronic Cigarette Community – Stand Together

This is what the e-cigarette community needs. Let’s all pull together to show that this is the future.

So, I managed to replace my crappy Verizon XV6800 cell phone this past Wednesday. Don’t get me wrong, when I first got it it was a decent phone, and had Windows Mobile Professional 6.0 (which I promptly updated to 6.1), but over the course of a year or so it started giving me all kinds of problems. It would start up at roughly 78% of the phone’s RAM being used, and required a soft reset almost daily to remain usable. Not to mention the fact that the battery life after a year was becoming terrible. I’d have trouble making it through a day of work with spotty signal (not helping at all).

So, I decided it was time to replace my phone, as my New Every Two time was near (I’ll spare you the details of the phone conversations with Verizon to get THAT little issue cleared up), and I was faced with a decision. For the last 8 months or so, I’ve been enamored with the iPhone, and when the 3G-S released I had become steadfast that I would drop Verizon just to get one. Then, not too long ago, that changed.

The Droid was released.

I hadn’t heard about this phone much until about two weeks before its release date, but once I heard about it I was hooked. An Android phone, and Android 2.0 at that, coming to Verizon? Being built by Motorola? A better looking screen than an iPhone? A hardware keyboard?! I had to have it.

So, Wednesday morning came, and I packed myself and my e-cigs up and took a ride to Best Buy at around quarter to 11. I had some trouble with Verizon (as I mentioned earlier, and I’ll spare you yet again the details), and eventually went home slightly dejected and Droidless. One more call to Verizon fixed the last lingering issue that was keeping me from upgrading, and I promptly drove right back to Best Buy and bought my Droid.

So here it is, almost a week from that date. I’ve had ample time to play around with it and I should have enough material to post a proper review of the device, but seeing the time it already is tonight and the fact that I have work tomorrow at 8AM means that it will have to wait till tomorrow.

Also, I’ve posted a few more YouTube videos reviewing e-cigarette stuff, so go check them out as well. I’ll be posting another one of these as well (likely tomorrow), since I just received two juices from a new supplier I decided to try purchasing from and they are really good.

As usual, keep your eyes open…we’re watching you.

Welcome back, all. Herein I present the second video-post of Darkened Eyes history, where I give my pros and cons between the SS No. 7 and the Joye 510 (otherwise known as the Titan, the Dura, the Yeti, etc.) e-cigarettes.

I’ll likely be back with numbers 3 and 4 being individual reviews of each one, now that I’ve had them for a while, but I need to free up some space on this hard drive before I can do that.

I do happen to have a spare drive laying around though, I might image that as a base OSX image just for video editing for this kind of thing. We shall see.

Without further blabbering from me, here is video-post number 2:

I know I promised that I would get off the couch for this one, but it was kind of a spur-of-the-moment type recording. Hopefully I can find a spot in the apartment where I can record and it looks a little more professional…ish.