Thursday, August 21, 2008
Thursday, August 07, 2008
HTC Tilt Goes Out The Door… Two Thumbs Down. The iPhone is in.
HTC. OUT! *points towards the door*
And Don’t Come back!
I’ve had it up to here (I’m pointing to my neck in case you can’t see me) with the HTC Tilt. I went back to AT&T tonight to join the iPhone bandwagon. Sure, the Tilt looks awesome, has a slider keyboard for full qwerty comfort, but it sucks.
Cons for the HTC Tilt:
A) Has FOUR times the memory of my BlackJack, yet operates slower without any even software installed.
B) Flipping from Portrait to Landscape view lags the video card sooo badly. It’s 3 or 4 seconds before I can get the screen to flip and get decluttered.
Phone.
C) When I dial a call, the digital keypad disappears, and I have to hit “Keypad” to get it back. I dial companies all day long, so most of my 587 person address book requires me to dial an extension. To do that I have to hit the phone button, then dial the number because the memory seek isn’t very fast so I’ve dialed most of the entire number before it’s matched it to my phonebook entry, then I have to hit talk. Then I wait for it to connect. Then I have to hit keypad again,which requires looking at the phone, and then dial the extension.
On my blackjack, I dialed the first “Pai” for Paige, someone I call every day for parts orders, then hit 353 for her extension, then I’m in. Requires WAY less work to dial.
D) Could the notifications screen be anymore annoying? If I want to see the Keypad button while the phone is at rest, I have to hit Power once to wake it up (stupid), then hit “Notification” to be informed of whatever WiFi hotspot I’m near, then hit dismiss, then hit Notifiction again to see how many text messages I’ve had since I last pressed the button, then hit Options, dismiss, then hit notification again to see how many emails I’ve received, then hit dismiss again, THEN I can hit keypad. It’s a phone chock full of notification options! I have indicators on the top of the screen for that. I can look and see I have voicemail, text messages, or emails.. do you really have to make me clear ALL the notifications every time I want to hit the Keypad button?
E) It’s slow as hell. The internet browser is great.. pretty fast too, but the response of the phone is horrible to input commands. I have to slow down to dial. Dialing my partner should take less then 3 seconds. Boom, boom boom, dial. With the Tilt, I have to wait about half a second for the keypad to accept my last key before hitting the next.. not the optimal interface for a person on the go.
F) The phone does NOT ship with voice commander. HTC and AT&T state that it does.. it does not. If you want voice commander (the ability to dial via voice command out of your phonebook) then you have to pay $40.00. Are you serious? $40.00 to microsoft for something the phone is already advertised to do out of the box?
G) GPS? No… the GPS is only an option if you want to pay AT&T another $10.00 per month for AT&T Navigator. Dude.. I’m using free DOJ satellites? Why the hell are you charging me for this?
Pro’s for the HTC Tilt:
A) Cleaning the oil from your skin off it is pretty easy, if you dig in the corners with a q-tip… otherwise, I’m jaded at the moment.
Cons for the iPhone:
I don’t know yet. I’ll let you know in ten to fourteen business days when it gets here.
Pro’s for the iPhone:
I DO know the GPS works independently of AT&T’s navigator package.. no fee to use it. It’s also amazingly fast to dial. As fast as I hit the keys, the phone responds, so I’m cool with that.
8 GB of storage is plenty, so I opted not to get the 16gb version. Nothing will replace my 80gb iPod anyway, so I’ve got plenty of music for the road. I probably will load some audiobooks on it though, just for kicks, especially if they’ll play over bluetooth.
No sweat streaks in the corner of the glass.. the whole top is flat so you can clean it easily with one swipe.
It charges off the same docks I already have for my 2 iPods, both radio docks, my car charger, my USB charger, and my FM broadcaster will all charge it, so I won’t need accessories any time soon.
So.. lemme recap. Bonuses for the iPhone over the Tilt are FREE GPS, easier to clean, longer battery life, 32 times the built in storage… need I go on?
Why First South Bank Rocks, and why the NC State Employees Credit Union Sucks!
First South Bank
Again… why I love this bank! NO OTHER BANK IN THE WORLD I’VE EVER DEALT WITH DOES THIS!
I got a call about two minutes ago from Irene Berardi, who works at the Arlington branch, where I do my personal banking, informing me I had a debit coming through for $100.00 but only had $15.00 in the account. I had just gone to capitalone.com and paid my credit card using the online pay now feature. It shows me my bank accounts associated with the card and asks me to select the account from which to make the payment, based on the last 4 of the card number.
Apparently I was as idiot when I selected the account to pay from and selected the wrong one… just a backup savings account I keep for rainy day purposes.
Instead of letting the charge go through, charging me $29.00 for a bounce fee, AND running the risk of possibly denying the payment, she just called my cell phone and said “Did you know you have a charge going through on your account and you don’t have funds in that account to cover it?” I slapped my forehead and told her I must have chosen the wrong account to take the funds from, already picturing the problems this was going to cause me when I had to deal with Capital One.
“No problem” she says. “Do you just want me to transfer the funds from your other account?”
“Umm.. yeah. That’d be awesome… thanks!” I told her.
Done… crisis averted.
Did I goof? Yessir. Was it my fault? Yessir, completely.
Still, they are nice enough to assume you’re not a total idiot and they actually pick up the phone to call you and ask! I love that bank! That’s the second time something like that has happened in the four years I’ve been banking there
Hey! Credit Union! You might want to take lessons from the guys over at First South!
State Employee’s Credit Union
Why the credit union sucks!
Everyone wants to bank at the credit union; better interest rates, better online services than other banks, blah blah blah. So, I do. I finally got an account with the credit union a few years ago. Since then I’ve had nothing but problems.
Example:
Last week I sent my girlfriend by the bank with a check to deposit. I wrote the check to myself, from my business bank account at First South Bank and she was just to deposit it into our joint checking account so the bills I wrote online the day before would be covered.
I get a phone call on her lunch break, almost in tears, telling me the bank won’t take my check! In fact, they have a hold on all checks from me and I’m not allowed to deposit checks. What the F***? Now I cancel an appointment, leave my office, drive to the bank and lose my lunch break, and continue waiting for someone to get of their ass to provide us some customer service….
The lady pulls up my account and tells me “Oh. Mr. Jordan can’t deposit checks because there is a flag on his account. He’s in Africa.” I almost lost it right there! I less-than-politely asked her if I appeared to be in Africa, or rather did I appear to be sitting in front of her pissed as hell because the teller is an idiot? She agreed that my presence in her office did indeed indicate my presence firmly within continental US borders and that she’s waddle over and try to solve the problem.
Apparently, there was a flag put on my account, at my request over three years ago when I went to africa. I put that on the account to inform the bank of my travels so I would be able to use my debit card while I was in Africa instead of having my account closed because of suspected fraud the first time I swiped my card from Cairo or something… Meanwhile, for the last three years I’ve been making deposits, withdrawals, and paying bills through that account… why in the hell some retarded teller can’t read her screen is beyond me, but NOTHING in that flag indicated that I wasn’t supposed to be able to deposit funds. To the contrary, the account flag said I was overseas and COULD make transactions from foreign countries if needed.
It took the credit union the better part of an hour to resolve this. In the entire time I’ve banked there the customer service has royally sucked! They act as if you should be honored to bank there and they never make mistakes.
In short: First South Bank Rocks. The NC State Employee’s Credit Union Sucks!
(back to work now)
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