Ultra-portable terminals

[Fairlight]

Only Laura Brody would say something like:
> 	At this point, the two biggest obstacles are battery
> size/power and user interface. The guts of a portable unit

I would say antenna "power" is another one.  

My old cell phone (both old and new are Sony/Ericsson models, the most
equivalent available in features) had an external antenna and even in
low-signal areas I never used to have problems.

The new one is less impressive.  It has no external antenna to worry about
bending/snapping.  It's entirely internal.  However, if you cup your hand
around it holding it to your ear, transmission and reception both suffer
noticeably.  To keep it from doing this, you have to hold the thing by the
sides--which, because they're angled a bit (25 degrees maybe?) makes it
feel like you're gonna drop the damned thing half the time.

I don't know what they're -not- doing in the new ones, but whatever it is,
they should start.  Burying the antenna inside the unit was just a bad
design idea.

Now you're talking about trying to miniaturize something that's already
just marginal if it can't deal with the thickness of a hand plus the casing
surrounding it.  They just don't have the room for a proper loaded coil
antenna assembly like we used to use for CB's.  They're already pushing it
on some models.  I'm not seeing how they're going to go much smaller in the
immediate future and still have the power available to use the thing.

> not good enough. Additionally, when the unit gets
> that small, you need a new kind of speaker, don't
> you?

Ugh.  Earbuds.  I hope not.  Maybe the larger "internal" ear plugs like
Shure uses for stage monitors.  The buds are just plain painful--and for me
they never seemed to like to stay -in-.  If you like your music (or
anything else) loud, they also are actually more detrimental to your
hearing than regular speakers/headphones because the noise has more direct
impact on the nerves with less dissipation space.  Tiny speakers like
earbuds have really -lousy- dynamic bass response, too.  *cringe*

> I had to validate a Windows XP box after a repair. It
> insisted that I had to do it over the internet or call
> a human. Since it no longer saw the USB ethernet connection,
> I dialed the number. After wading through the menus, I
> had to tell the voice recognition software a string
> of some 50 numbers. After all of this, a recording
> tells me that I have to call back later because they
> are updating their systems. And Bill Gates wonders
> why so many people hate him and his company...

You're doing it wrong, Laura.  Well, you didn't say you tried it, anyway.
I don't even muck about with automated systems.  I hear one start up and
immediately shoot for the "0" button to hopefully reach a real person that
will actually get something done or direct me to the person that can.  Not
always available, but it beats the hard way when it is, which is more often
than people probably try.  Far more often than advertised.  My patience
with automated systems is...hell, I don't even actually manually dial my
voicemail number -or- my passwords.  They're on speed dial.  My cell is
protected with a PIN, and my physical land line phones are not accessible
by anyone except Kelly and me--who are -always- here to supervise if any
maintenance is done by anyone, which is quite rare.  So from a security
standpoint, I'm covered.  But I don't even have -that- much patience with
automated systems to enter my password for voicemail manually.  It pains me
to press 1 to hear my new messages.  Worse, when you archive messages, the
little bugger FORCES you to review them after 3 days before you can hear
your new messages, period, the end.  I've never found a way to bypass it.
I know how to fast forward to the end and resave, but that's 3 keypresses
per message!!!!  God, my world is crumbling. :)

I still like the spoofs on those systems.  I think my favourite (and I can
get away with laughing at this if anyone can) was for a ficticious mental
health clinic where it said, "If you have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder,
press 3 repeatedly."  That cracked me up!

But the real ones?  Nothing a 30-30 round through the mainboard of the
system wouldn't fix. :)  The real problem is that a good percentage of the
time, you enter your information and it's only a pre-screen to feed the
info to the next operator, who will just ask you for the SAME information
-again-!!!  Our 411 information is like that, but with voice...it asks you
what you want, and half the time you end up repeating it because the
operator asks again anyway.  I don't know why these places even bother half
the time.  I've finally taken to just remaining silent and waiting for the
operator because the automated information is wrong so often.  That's
actually another trick I'll use if "0" isn't available...just press nothing
and pray it falls through to a person.  Again, some places it won't and
will hang up on you.  I'm just -really- reluctant to deal with 10min worth
of menus.  And is there any place that -hasn't- "recently changed our
menus" so you should "please listen to the options carefully", even if the
options haven't actually changed for 2 years or more?  The ones that are
really bad won't let you punch early, either--you -have- to wait.

And people wonder why I'm grumpy by the time I get to talk to support
people at some places.  :)

mark->