Just updated Mint.com for Android and it’s a winner! Native app. Changes perspective perfectly based on orientation. Fully integrated. Almost as good as the web site.

The time had come for me to get an upgrade for my phone and I pondered on what it would take to replace my Palm Centro. I did think of just simply getting another one but realized that I needed something better. The keys were too small and part of it being old was that the power key wasn’t working well among other maladies that come with a phone aging. That aside, I scratched my head over having a “feature” phone i.e. one with little capabilities and sometimes a keyboard for texting. Problem is, those phones are flimsy and break up quickly. It started to look like the features that made a phone a good, durable one had gone into smartphones.

I thought of having an Android or Blackberry. Why not the iPhone? Well I already have one but its on my wife’s account and has a number for a different state. I’m still getting questions from the folks here at home as to why I should have 2 phones. Works well for me. We have 2 family plans in the house and things balance out well. The thing is I didn’t want 2 phones with web access. One would’ve been enough. I love the iPhone and can’t see myself without it. Why I liked the Palm Centro is that its really a smart phone and was offered at a time when Verizon didn’t require that you have a data plan for such items. If they had continued to do this my decision making process would’ve been much easier. I was beginning to feel robbed in that it was getting harder to get the perfect fit.

The perfect fit I think came when I was browsing around and saw Verizon offering the Blackberry bold, a phone I was eying at $29.99. Of course with 2 year agreement. I jumped at this chance and lo and behold, it was not only that but somehow since I was holding out against updating my prior 2 year agreement, I was given some kind of credit. My cost? $0 complete with shipping and handling.

Well that did it. I went online and in a few days, I got my RIM Blackberry. Somehow already I wasn’t feeling elated. Maybe other things on my mind. My wife started making her snide remarks about boys and their toys blah blah blah. But even that didn’t give me that push back to want to show her I’m a grown man.

Setting up the phone was easy. I was amazed at the activation process. Normally you would have to do a bunch of number inputs but they already had my phone’s serial number and everything ready to go. I just needed to enter some security info and in no time, my phone was activated.

I installed the Blackberry desktop software and apart from a problem it had updating applications where it just hung, everything went relatively smoothly. Using the phone however became a learning experience. Firstly, it took some getting used to with the horizontal screen. Cool as it is to some, the world is now a vertical thing with lots of screen space top to bottom. Not only was the screen small but didn’t seem to want to cooperate with holding it vertical. The keyboard was very good. This is one thing I know I would like. The keys are still small and I would use the Motorola Droid over it anytime but I liked it. Coming from the world of the iPhone, its all about the apps. Rim does have a formidable array of choices here and quite a few come already loaded mostly to do the basic. However, in terms of the quality one would expect from the iPhone, it wasn’t there. Take the browser. Really take it out and put in something more meaningful. It reminds me of ones on Windows phones 2 years ago. Hardly functional, without the capability of properly displaying web pages and not easy to really archaic in design. Using the phone felt like I was going back in time. Then there was the micro track pad. This is a replacement for the trackball of the older Blackberry models and it worked ok but the problem here is that the screen wasn’t touch capable. I initially smeared the glass by trying to use the screen for navigation. Everywhere you wanted to go you had to use that trackpad. Again, I’m so spoiled by the iPhone. Interestingly enough, it has a Twitter and Facebook app. Both are again, archaic in terms of their functionality and barely useful.

With all of its shortcomings, one need not forget why the Blackberry is what it is. Its a business tool. It integrates well into the systems of corporations which makes it a formidable tool for executives to communicate. You don’t have all the fancy trimmings to distract you but messages to receive and deliver. The big draw was the instant communications capability the phones have. Your connection is the actual network so when an email is sent, its received instantly. Even the iPhone can’t do that and has to download email messages. Blackberry has BBM or BlackBerry Messenger which is its instant messenger feature. Of course, with internet access, you can use one of the existing IM services like Yahoo, AOL, MSN and Google to communicate this way. And you can do this without having to send out your cryptic BBM number.

One of the good things the Blackberry has is the ability to connect to GSM networks which is useful abroad. You’ll only need to get a SIM card from one of the foreign countries you visit. There are many prepaid systems which can work very well for the business traveler and save quite a bundle.

There are more features of the Blackberry that I haven’t gone into as yet but as I do I’ll post. In the meantime, I have to say to RIM, step up your game and truly compete with the Android and iPhone with how things look and feel. These truly represent the computer in the palm of your hand and if you don’t offer products that do the same, you’ll go the way of the Dodo bird. Right now you guys are enormously popular especially in 3rd world countries. With Android phones however, this can change and that has already started. Yes, you rock in business as folks would be more into communicating instead of being distracted by cool web pages and apps. However, this is something people are beginning to anticipate as the norm and if you don’t deliver this, you’re gone. For now, let me see how this BBM thing works? Shucks, I have to send a text message to my friend to have him send me his BBM number. Oh well, this is going to be interesting.

Every since Google Chrome came out, it didn’t do much for rendering pages in all their glory with the best rendering and mime types etc showing pages the way they were supposed to. What it did was to produce a web page with most of the standards at blinding speed. Most web pages worked fine with it. However, with the web expanding more and more and with HTML 5 playing more a role in what you see online, they’re beginning to show their underwear. And its not bright.

Take Yahoo’s new beta email. Right now, if you try to pull up their email with attachments, you get a mush of characters where its trying to render the mimetype instead of setting it up as downloadable file icons the way Yahoo intended. Things seem to work fine on IE and FireFox. I haven’t tried Safire and Opera as yet but I would expect that Chrome in their quest to be the best browser would’ve had the best renderings, the most up-to-date capabilities. Afterall, FireFox is developed for free by concerned and dedicated programmers. Google has bazillions of dollars to throw around for stuff like this. Hmm. Note to self: money doesn’t get you good code. Good programmers do. Sorry for the digression.

With the Chrome books coming out which would essentially give you a view of the whole web world through the Chrome browser, I’m concerned about what would be left out. Maybe they really want the whole world to use Gmail, whose interface hasn’t changed much since its formation. Got to say that they do have a lot of offerings in the GoogleShpere but with what’s happening out there now, they have some catching up to do with their shiny browser which is already beginning to look quite dull. Fast but dull.

My son was home from college one weekend and while having fun with his sisters and friends, my wife used his computer. Everything was fine until my son suddenly remembered that he had homework assignments to be completed for classes the next day. Yeah, I did the same thing but he’s supposed to be better than me so he did get the usual finger pointing and the “why did you wait until the last minute for this” talk. Then as ear splitting as could be, “who used my computer” blasted into the air. My poor wife, terrified that she was the last one and may have done something wrong, timidly asked. “what’s wrong, honey?”.

“Can’t seem to go anywhere, this thing’s not working”. He replied with a mix of desperation, anger and somewhere deep in there, regret.

“I used it but everything was fine. I was able to do what I wanted and everything was ok. What’s wrong now?” my wife explained. I’m listening to all of this hoping not to hear the dreadful question. “Honey, did you use Junior’s computer?” Now you can’t possibly win situations like this. Our house is very wired. When everyone’s home, there are 3 laptops, 3 desktops, 2 iPhones and 1 blackberry all connected to the my measly wifi connection. For the most part, my laptop is off limits to everyone but that works for about a 10th of the time. My two little girls who hate when I call them my 2 little girls, don’t have computers and have to use somebody else’s or the main “family” desktop which is in the family’s office.  You can imagine the frustration of being stuck in a room working, playing, etc.

Instinctively, they responded that they didn’t use the computer and they were using mine or were using the desktop. Oh, did I tell you that this was happening as I am about to leave for church? Oh yeah. So I’m now fully dressed, my son’s waiting on his computer to do his assignment, he refuses to use mine for whatever reason and I have to get the thing up and running.

Problem: No WiFi

Well the first thing he told me was that he can’t get a wifi connection. Then he mentions that there’s a blue wi-fi indicator on near the select button near the touch pad. Normally when the computer is turned on it comes on and stays on unless turned off with the wifi switch at the left side of the computer. It was not visible which meant it was not on. Next to the WiFi indicator is a switch which actually turns it on and off. Flipping the switch did nothing.

Mind you, we did get a connection when the it was wired into the network. This told me that the culprit was the wifi “radio” as they call it. On researching, I found that the wifi interface that was being used was the Intel® PRO/Wireless 3945ABG, a very popular device used in many laptops. To get to it one needed only remove the back panel that hides the hard drive. The wifi interface was connected to the mini PCI-Express connector.

On checking to see where I could buy the device, I found it to be quite inexpensive. At compuvest.com it was listed at $11.50 for a refurbished model. I saw various prices and offerings on E-bay. I think we bought it from a seller on ebay and didn’t pay more than $20 with shipping. Paying keen attention to the connectors, it was easy to replace and on flipping the WiFi switch, the light came on and the connection was reestablished.

So here’s the recap when you don’t have a connection:

1. Check your wifi light. If its on, most likely your wifi radio is fine. If not proceed.

2. Turn the wifi switch on and off. If it does not come on after flipping the switch, proceed

3. Remove the back panel of the laptop where the WiFi connector would be. Make sure you check your computer’s manual if you’re not sure.

4. I was fortunate to have another computer’s WiFi radio so I was able to use it and test to make sure it was the device. If you have this facility,

5. Gently unscrew the radio from the connector and remove it from the PCI express connector and replace it.

Interestingly enough, this is also your chance for upgrading your radio if its only 802.11 A/B/G. You can upgrade to 802.11 N but it would be a little trickier and would need some additional things to do such as software upgrades.

As usual, let me know your thoughts.