Last Message: telnet
Next Message: RE: telnet
Date: 2000-04-26 16:27:59
From "Steven Scotten "
Subject: wireless, not seamless
Well, I blew off my meditation group tonight to go down to Airborne Express to pick up my Minstrel, and brought it home and opened it up. Here's some relevant info: Good: rechargeable battery pack Bad: not standard batteries. You have to buy a second battery pack for $40 if you want to be able to keep a charged one around. Furthermore, I don't see how that would do much good, seeing as how you can't charge the batteries unless they're in the modem. I'll have to be really convinced that this is worth it in order to start buying spare battery packs. Size: I'm pretty pleased with the size. It makes the Palm III about twice as thick and about 3/4" longer than it was without the modem. Of course, it is the older Palm grey, not the newer charcoal color, but that's far from the end of the world. Good surprise: I didn't need to buy the replacement stylii that I did. Since the Minstrel clips on to the back of the Palm, there's no good way to get the stylus out. So they included a stylus in the package, identical to the replacement stylii I just bought except for having an odd-shaped clip at the end that makes it possible to grab on to it from the side. Bad suprise: the software CD was missing. I think I got everything from the web sites, but still, that kinda blows. I have the *sleeve* for the CD, but no CD. Frustration: I haven't figured out how to do anything with it yet. The instructions come from one company (Novatel) and the account information from another (GoAmerica) and apparantly they didn't compare notes to make sure that the process would be clear. According to the Minstrel setup, I need to tell it my username and my password. GoAmerica says my "user name" is "Steven Scotten" but it also has a "Subscriber ID", an "EID", a "Login ID", and an "Account ID". There's a Go.Web password and a "Login Password" too, but thankfully they are both the same. More Frustration: the "Setup Wizard" doesn't do what the instructions say it will. There are supposed to be four steps to it, but after the second step it tries to connect and sits for about five minutes before returning an utterly useless error message. "Your connection was not established. Please check your configuration." Yeah, I'm pretty sure they could have added in some code to tell me what part of the process didn't work, but then they'd be accused of making bloatware, right? The manual configuration wasn't much help either. There seem to be a couple of configuration screens in the Wizard that I just can't get to. And there's no 24-hour support. Strange: There's an ominous warning that "all persons must be at least 20 cm away from the antenna when the transmiter is operating to meet FCC RF exposure requirements." I want to know how I'm supposed to get 20cm away from a handheld device while operating it. =^) Well, tomorrow I'll call customer support and see what they have to tell me. Maybe I'll try taking it outdoors where the reception may be better. I'm certainly not discouraged, but the Minstrel folks lost their opportunity to impress me with how smooth and easy getting wireless can be. Hmph. Steve
This message has been viewed 1017 times