I had run a series of columns back in August about the trials and tribulations of getting a new cell phone. Well, the story ain't over yet!
If you recall, I had originally been prodded by my spouse (and also by my editor) to get an iPhone, but I was disenchanted with the price and the very slow AT&T Internet access. After doing a lot of looking around, I finally did decide to try the Sprint Mogul phone. It had the higher speed cell Internet and email access that I wanted, but was also a Windows Mobile device and could run my business spreadsheets and time accounting. So off we went to the Sprint store in Wilmington, which had the phone I wanted in stock.
All was great until we came back over the bridge and down 133. The coverage was terrible, and was just as bad at my house. If I let it roam to another carrier it worked better some of the time, but Sprint has a reputation of ending the contracts of customers who roam too much. So we drove back again to Wilmington to return the phone.
Now comes the odd part of the story. I have been an Alltel customer for many years, and before I even started looking around I had tried to get a similar phone from Alltel. They traditionally don't offer the latest and greatest phones, and just didn't have what I wanted.
When I switched back to Alltel after my two days with Sprint, the salesperson happily let me back on, but (being a good salesperson) she asked me why I left. I told her about my search; she was very surprised because in fact Alltel was just testing the phone I wanted and would have it available in a couple of weeks! I was stunned because I could have saved all that work. She promised to call me as soon as it was available, and she did.
But, again, that isn't the end of the story. The phone and price were OK, but the monthly contract situation was not. All the other cell companies that I spoke to had plans that featured Internet access and email a la carte - you just paid $25-$40 more per month on top of any voice plan to get data. Alltel, however, decided to provide data plans only bundled with other services that I didn't need or want - in this case 7-7 off peak, unlimited texting (I don't text), and Alltel's My Circle 10 caller free calling plan.
Changing to one of these new plans would have cost me $60 per month more. If I had wanted the bundle features that probably would have been a good price - but I didn't. Many calls to Alltel to persuade them to offer data a la carte were fruitless.
So I put my foot down and decided to keep the old phone that I have. But now Apple has lowered the price on the iPhone by $200 so perhaps in the future I may look there again.
By the way, with respect to AT&T: they have been advertising their cell phone Internet plug in cards for notebook PCs very heavily lately on TV. The commercials feature somebody out in the middle of nowhere claiming that they have "found" the Internet there with the AT&T card. This may be true - you can probably get the Internet anywhere you can get an AT&T cell signal - but it will be their very slow EDGE network unless you are in a large metropolitan area. Hint: this isn't one of them!
Another interesting development on the PC scene is that USB 3.0 is now being officially designed. 3.0 will be downward compatible with 2.0 (i.e. same cables) but runs at 10 times the speed - 4.8 Gb/sec. This will be a significant boost to external hard drive performance or when downloading data from a video camera. But don't expect to see USB 3.0 products for perhaps two years.
(Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport - Oak Island area. You can visit his Website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail questions or column ideas to him at bsc@bobseidel.com. For specific inquiries, please call Bob Seidel Consulting, LLC at 278-1007.)