I purchased my wife a new 13″ 1.6ghz MacBook Air (Late 2008, Core 2 Duo, w/ 2gb RAM, 120gb Hard Drive) MB543LL/A in April 2009. It was purchased directly from Apple for $1349 + $80.94 in sales tax (I purchased it through a friend who worked for Apple so there was a discount on the price).

A year later in April 2010 I purchased the Applecare warranty for this device off of ebay for $104.99.

The total amount that had been spent on this device was $1534.93.

In March 2012, my wife replaced this computer with a refurbished MacBook Air (the latest at the time of purchase – and this post) – a 13″ 1.7GHz  i5 for $1099 + $65.94 in tax (normal retail price for this model was $1299).

The old C2D MacBook Air was put on ebay and ultimately sold for $541 + $25 shipping. Subtract the ebay fees:

• $3.65 for listing related (bold, picture pack, value pack w/ subtitle)
• $48.69 final value fee
• $2.25 final value fee on shipping

And subtract the paypal $16.71 transaction fee. And finally, the actual shipping fee of  $18.45 for USPS Priority Mail.

The amount remaining of $476.25 is the final amount I got back on this computer at the end.

I bought my MacBook Pro on 9/26/2010. On 10/4/2011, I remembered that I was supposed to put Applecare on it.

I gave a call in the daytime to Applecare and spoke with a rep but was told it was too late to put on. I asked to speak to the supervisor, and he said he would see what he can do. But then the called back later and said he couldn’t put it on.

I tried my luck and called again in the evening. I told the new rep that the same thing: that I wanted to put Applecare on and was only a few days out. He looked and he said, “uh, according to this, you bought this laptop last week.” I replied that I didn’t and that it was a year and a week ago. He said, “nope, says here it was a week ago.” I stopped arguing. And with that, I got it put on. He even let me use my student discount for $239.

Attached is a screenshot showing that the Applecare now ends on 10/7/2013 which makes no sense since it shows the laptop wasn’t in fact bought a week ago like the Rep said was in his system but the date doesn’t match today (10/4) either.

I wonder if the earlier rep or supervisor felt bad he/she couldn’t help and moved my days up incase I tried again? Who knows.

Update: On October 6th I got an e-mail saying that my Applecare date had been updated to September 2014.  Below is an updated screenshot of my Computer’s warranty according to Apple:

My Nokia N95 8gb pretty died recently and for the first time since 2005, I have been using a non-Nokia phone as my primary phone.  The phone right now is the BlackBerry Bold which I hate more and more every day because of something new that I discover it can’t do.  But moreso, it’s RIM that I’m most amazed with because I can’t believe that a phone this recent has these kinds of flaws.  If the company make features like these, I fear it’s ability to last in a mobile world where anything is supposed to be possible.

This post has started on 7/12/2011, but I will keep revisiting it to fill in the things I’ve already found but haven’t documented yet and also the things I discover in the future.

Reason 7/12/2011- I had a bunch of images on my phone and connected to my Mac’s BlackBerry Desktop Software to pull off but it wouldn’t pull them since they weren’t on a media card (since I don’t have one):

So I thought, I would just pull off via BlueTooth, but turns out the BlackBerry bold doesn’t have the necessary services to pull off the images:

So I went to initiate the bluetooth transfer of the images from the phone within the Files program (file manager/explorer equivalent) but it turns out you can’t select multiple files.  So I had to manually send each one of my 40+ imagesand accept the transfer on my mac each time (maybe I could have turned this auto-accept in retrospect).  Then go back and manually delete each one off my phone.

More later..

 

I’ve been an active mac laptop user for a little over 9 years now (ignoring the Apple IIe I had as a kid).  Unfortunately though, during the day at work, I’ve always had a different computer that I had to use (and was always a PC – yeck).  This has always meant that I have less time during the day to use my expensive mac laptop – expensive because it was always the more powerful one (then the PowerBook, now the MacBook Pro).  So in order to get my money’s worth out of my Mac, I can’t really have anything else fighting for its attention.  The exceptions are the cheaper Mac Mini computers I’ve always bought to keep at home for my days off/evenings in when I’m working around my home office.

This is why the iPad was something that I never considered owning.  I thought it seemed kind of cool but nothing for me.  Plus, when I’m on the web at home, I’m not just browsing – I’m editing videos, doing stuff with photos, have a ton of windows open.

But then in January my brother in law bought me and my wife one as a gift.  Since then we’ve both been using it here and there but not a terrible amount.  Again, most of what I do is easier on a laptop or just plain can’t be done.

But the iPad is something good for on the go – if and only if I can get internet on it all the time.  And since I don’t want to pay yet another amount a month for a data connection, this limits my options.  The best one I have come up with is to get a phone that can take its data connection and make a wifi hotspot out of it for no additional charge.   This would allow me to have something quick to work with for my stand-up.  Also, when I was traveling, it was something handy to keep on me while going around but not having a case/holder for it made me nervous.  Plus, I was traveling internationally so didn’t have data connection everywhere so I kept looking for wifi hotspots.

The iPad 2 announcement came when I was traveling and the updates that stood out to me were the lightness, thinness, and the cameras.  These updates would have been appreciated to have on my trip.  It’s definitely nothing that would make me want to upgrade from the iPad and still not enough for me to justify buying an iPad 2.

I’ve been a mobile phone user for over 10 years now and the majority of my phones have been Nokias.  As a matter of fact, my first phone was a Nokia (I got into my extensive Nokia history here in this post I wrote last year: http://ifweran.com/nokia-we-would-change-around-quite-a-few-things/2010/08/ )

My current phone is a N95 8gb which I have had now for almost 2 years.  The phone is starting to die, but even then, I’m also needing my phone to do some other main things (example 3g+ on t-mobile).  I’m looking for a replacement, but unfortunately, nothing in Nokia’s arsenal is catching my eye.

My need is pretty simple - I want my same phone again but want it to do more.  I’m a very big (one of the last it seems) proponent of the keypad.  Out of everything a phone can do, I care most about how fast and easy it is to type on.  This has always been my driving force with my phones

It is why I kept using my 8890, 6170, and now my N76 for so long. I’m mainly using my phone while doing something (walking, driving – yes I know it’s wrong) and that is when the keypad is your friend.

I got my hopes up with the X3-02 but it’s just too limited for me to do anything with (as it was meant to be). But a capable Nokia touchscreen phone with a keypad is what I dream about late at night.

So, with me being unable to get a good phone in keypad form, this means I’m going to have to settle for a phone with a keyboard.  So far I have demo-ed 3 phones from my friends at Womworld Nokia: The N97 Mini, the N900, and a few months ago the C7.  The N97 Mini I wrote a very critical review about, The N900 just wasn’t for me (I know it’s a mini-computer that became a phone, but that’s not really my cup of tea), and the C7 I also was not impressed by (I still haven’t written my review yet).

So the big question – if I have to go with a phone with a keyboard, why am I not going with the E7 (or something? And the reason is that I love Nokia but don’t like Symbian.  A few years ago, all the extra stuff you couldn’t do with a phone really wasn’t a big deal, but now it is.  My wife had her 8801 from ’06-’08 and was so in love with the form, she didn’t care about apps, etc.  She then got her N82 and was happy with that too – until she started noticing around her what others were doing with their iPhone.  In Summer 2010, I got her an iPhone finally and she’s doing a lot more with a phone than she ever did with a Nokia (although now she’s not happy with it and wants something else).  I know there are apps out there, etc but it’s just not as easy as with the other guys.  And the apps.. well app on Nokia I do use hard (Gravity) still feels it lacks something.  There are always those other things that bothered me too – like how I couldn’t change the default browser to much smoother Opera Mini.  Also how it still doesn’t play nice with macs (The Nokia Multimedia Transfer app for example doesn’t even run on intel – thus requiring Rosetta to run and hogging more resources on my computer.  And it doesn’t even delete my pictures after importing them).

So, all things the same, I’d rather consider another OS (and as a result, unfortunately, another phone).  All things not the same (i.e. keypad),  I would stay with Nokia and be ok with doing the MAIN things I need well and not be able to do other things.

I’m going to keep an eye on Nokia because of this whole Windows Mobile 7 thing.  And as I mentioned, I love the Nokia phone and think it is a superior phone to others.  I’ll still keep rooting for Nokia and getting excited when I run into their events, like this one in Kuala Lumpur:

Late in September 2010 I ordered my new 15″ MacBook Pro, bringing about the end of my previous MacBook Pro’s time with me. This is the cycle I’ve been following since my first Apple purchase in 2002 (ignoring the Apple IIe I had a kid that my dad bought) – I buy an Apple notebook/laptop and sell within 3 years before the applecare is up.

Here is a breakdown of my history with my previous 15″ 2.2ghz MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo Santa Rosa:

1. Bought 10/27/2010

   a) At the time, it was going for $1799 at the education price at the time

   

   b) But I bought refurb so my cost was $1699
   

   c) .. and I got a $100 rebate thanks to going through outside vendor (something it seems you can’t do it anymore
   

2. Bought RAM less than a month later on 11/20/2007 (black friday deal) from frys.com:
   Transcend RAM(   2  x 5448239 DDR2 2GB PC5300 SO-D TRA = 79.98 + S&H ($9.59) = $ 89.57

   (On 3/11/2008, e-mailed transcend about trouble w/ RAM.  They replaced free under warranty. I installed and confirmed w/ them it was fine on 4/23/2008)

3. 10/24/2008 – Applecare purchased off of ebay for $203.95.  There was some money I got back from bing cashback for this, but can’t remember the exact amount
4. 6/2009 – put Western Digital 320gb internal hard drive (WD3200BEVT) in laptop.  I put this in because the external enclosure I had stopped working but the actual hard drive was working ok

   (Applecare took it out during a mail-iun service later visit but it was fine and I put it back in)

5. 10/19/2010 sold on ebay for $825:
   

   -$50.30 in ebay fees, -$24.23 paypal fees, and minus (?) in shipping fees.That’s the final price I got for this laptop when it was time for it to go.

   Some other completed listings around that time which were somewhat similar:

   
   

   Apple MacBook Pro 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo 4GB 200GB 15.4″ for $799 + $20ish shipping
   
   

   
   

   Apple MacBook Pro 2GHz 15.4″ Laptop 320GB HD, 2GB RAM for $649 w/ free shipping
   
   
   

   Apple MacBook Pro 15″ 2.2GHz, 500GB HDD, 3G RAM w/ Applecare until late March 2011 for $835ish + $35 shipping
   
   
   

   Apple MacBook Pro (15.4″, 2.2GHz, 500GB HDD, 4GB RAM for $900 w/ free shipping – no warranty (upper end of sale price it seems)
   

   
   

I did get my money’s worth w/ Applecare, here’s at least some of the applecare visits this MacBook Pro experienced:

1. 11/19/2008 – Repair complete by applecare for when the “s” key stopped working
2. 7/14/2009 – Repairs complete by applecare involving keyboard (primary repair), and a bunch of secondary repairs they saw fit: hinge assembly, power adapter/cord, logic board, and top case
3. 10/7/2009 – repairs complete by applecare involving the screen which had broke (applecare still covered – w/ some pushing), new battery, and a bunch of other random things involving bracket, barrel , flex cable, etc
4. 10/22/2009 – follow up repairs complete w/ speakers not working, keyboard and left in/out board and flex cable.  they also replaced my top case on request which was nice of them
5. 10/13/2010 – final repair completed where something w/ memory module was done(?), the left in/out board (apparently there was distorted sound?) and a new battery was put in.  And of course they did a full inspection of everything so that is how you know you are getting the computer in its best condition

Over 10 years ago, my first phone was a Nokia – the Nokia 6185.  I was an employee at Circuit City in  ’99 when it came out for Sprint.  It was a magical time.  My next Nokia was the 8860 (when it came down to a few hundred bucks, down from its $800 price tag).  Afterwards, came the 8890.. (’02 – ?), then the 6170 (’05-’07), the N76 (’07-’09), and then my current phone the N95 8gb for over a year now.  I may not be a nokia expert, but I have used many.   And I do have a fanboy passion for them as I do for the Apple (every product except the iPhone – I’ll get into that later).

In ’06 I bought my wife the 8801 as an Eid gift and in ’08 the N82 as a Bday gift.  (She did replace her N82 recently though with an iPhone 3gs – more on that later).

The N95 8gb’s been frustrating me a bit though.  The biggest being that I can’t do 3g with it because I’m with t-mobile.  But even if I had that, it seems the things I can do are very limited.

I visited the (soon closing – more on that later) Chicago Nokia Store on 8/9/10 and 8/10/10 when I was out there.  There I played with a few phones but it was really the N97 Mini that caught my eye and the N900.

When the opportunity presented itself to get the trial after my lucky tweet that @womworldnokia replied to (although I did also fill out the form for the trial after I found out about it from Andre on http://dev.nokia.wordpress.org), I went with the N97 Mini over the N900 because I did like that more from playing around with it.  Also, if I recall correctly, the N900 wouldn’t switch to portrait mode when held upright on the demo.  I should have and will probably go with the N900 though – I’ll get more into that later.

Let’s get started on my hands-on experience with the N97.

On Friday, 8/20 I got the DHL guy JUST as he was leaving with my N97 Mini phone since he didn’t have authorization to leave it.  So that was a crisis avoided. I was flying out Chicago in just a few hours so I’m glad I didn’t miss that.  Finally later that night, I got to unbagging (the DHL package) and unboxing:

So first impression.  The phone feels great in my hand.  It’s got a little weight on it which feels good.  (However, later I would feel maybe there was a little too much weight).

I want to have close to a new phone as possible so I look online and found the instructions to reset which involved holding down certain keys and powering up. Now my phone’s good to go.

I spend some time playing around and exploring.  One thing I noticed was that the back was scratchless, and at the time of this writing a weekish later, the back still looks good.

I didn’t move contacts over because I just set up google sync to bring over my calendar and contacts.  Downside to this method though is that you lose the default numbers and the groups you have set so in retrospect

I then started putting the apps on that I use.  My main app is Gravity by Janole.

The other two main apps are Gmail and Google Maps, but neither seemed to work with my N97 Mini.

I also have been meaning to put a wordpress app on, I wanted to give http://dev.nokia.wordpress.org/ a better shot (had tried it once with my N95 8gb). I also threw on Opera since I’m not a fan of the Nokia Browser.

My other usual app is Sports Tracker, I’ll get to that a little later.

So the next few days I was using, using, using.  I found things I liked and found things I didn’t like.  I love the touch screen.  My next phone will definitely be touch screen.  It  makes everything so much easier.  I like the way that I can click on the clock to get to the alarm and also control the profile via touch.  It was a little confusing to figure out how the home screen is set up but finally I got it. My set up is the clock on the top, apps across the next two rows, and then email preview and twitter preview (via gravity) rather than Facebook.

The camera is great and seems to be along the lines of my N95 8gb’s.  I took the phone with me to Chicago Comic Con on Sunday 8/22 and took the following pics: http://www.facebook.com/#!/album.php?aid=268106&id=535397537.  I remember when I compared pictures between my wife’s N82 and my n95 8gb, her phone seemed to take better pictures. Not just at night but even in daytime, many of my pictures would come out blurry.  I noticed some blurry pictures with this so I think it compares more to the N95 8gb over the N82.

My problems with the phone

So I discussed the plusses.  But there are some minuses too this device and/or Nokia’s OS too.

1) It is not easy inputting on this device.  It depends on the kind of person you are but the pull out keyboard was hard to type on for me because the keys were so small and hard to press.  The virtual keyboard is really hard to use.  the tactile feedback helps but it is still easy to mistype by hitting wrong keys or think you hit a key but it didn’t go through and you’ve moved on.  It takes a while to really input anything and may last few phones – N95 8gb, N76 (this one was so so), 6170, 8890, typing w/ the keypad was a breeze.  I could say what I want and if the T9 wasn’t flawed (last word you put in – even incorrectly – learned and moved to front of cycle, barely remembered any new words), I could outtype anyone. Much of my usage on this phone is with one hand while I’m walking, driving (yes, I know I shouldn’t), etc so I’m using the virtual keyboard and it is very hard to type something.  As a matter of fact, for twitter, the system is very flawed because when you are typing something with a keypad, you go into a “typing mode” and you can’t see your character count which you need when tweeting.  See the pics below:

If I was to pull out the keyboard out right now and start typing, I would be fine.  as I type, the character count would increase and I would know as I put my tweet in.

However, when using the touch screen, notice how the character count and everything is gone now. This makes tweeting really difficult.

I also felt the virtual input was more awkward when I go into the new word learning mode. The backspace is in a new place.

Finally the tweet’s done and fortunately I’m within my limit. Otherwise, I would have to go back in and trial and error it.

But as you can see, it’s not easy to use the virtual keyboard.

2) That was the biggest problem, the second biggest was the confusion when I enter an area with wifi, for example my house.  The phone didn’t work like the iPhone which kicks into wifi mode once it detects wifi and all the apps start using it.  I had to configure my apps to do this and for some it was easy like with Gravity.  With Opera though, you had to change it manually.  There was an option for system default but I had that set as my cell phone’s data plan. Maybe there’s something I am doing wrong but there were many occasions where at home I would look on my screen and see both the edge notie and the wlan notice.

3) Even though I Tried, I couldn’t get Opera to be my default browser. When I clicked on links within Gravity, it would fire up the Nokia Browser

4) Battery life is nothing spectacular.  I won’t go out and say its bad because it seems along the lines of many phones.  But I pretty much will be charging daily or twice a day – once at work too.

So those are my gripes with the phone – at least for me.  Maybe for someone else they aren’t a big deal.

I also got to use Sports Tracker finally last Wednesday where I went out for a nice bike ride: http://www.sports-tracker.com/#/workout/shahryar/43v7j75qqk5fu2eu

This is a great app- especially because you can take pictures and upload those but to do this, it would be nice to have something to mount your phone to your bike – and with a bungee cord so you can take pictures while riding.

That’s it for what I’ve observed from using – at least for now.  I plan to visit this page again soon and make some updates in my last remaining week with the device.

Where to go from here?

The flaws I listed above are strong reasons for me at least to look for something else.  It’s looking like it is going to be the N900 for two reasons: 1) because of the T-mobile USA compatible 3g band and 2) because of all the crazy things I keep hearing you can do with the N900, I ultimately will go with that it seems (hopefully will be able to trial that next).  In the future, it seems the N9 is the big deal but I don’t think that’s out til late this year and will probably be expensive so I don’t see myself owning it until next year making now really the time to have the N900 so I can get a nice full life out of it (apparently there have been some really nice deals on the N900 like the $199 + Trade in deal).

However, using the N97 Mini for the week made me realize that the most important thing for me with a device is ability to input. That’s what I do the most so all the other bells and whistles can be nice, but if I can’t input with ease, I can’t go with the device.

If this device was on Sprint, it would solve all my problems problem (i.e. – The Mogul!). I found out about this device on an Engadget post today.

Here’s a nice summary about this device from Nate (cut and pasted from this comment here):
yea, somehow I don’t think there’ll be a ton of people here who were willing to put down that much change for such a device.
here’s a little bit of a critique that was on one of the page announcing availability. interesting sounding device.

“saq @ Jun 18th 2008 1:51PM

One
of my very wealthy customers ordered this device on my recommendation
and I got to play with it for a few days before he picked it up and
left for his annual trip around the world. (He loves the device btw).
This
PDA is really awesome, the screen and ergonomics of it are just perfect
for what its intended for. Even a 3.5″ screen is too small for touching
and other things.
The 5″ screen is perfect for Windows Mobile &
Internet functions (Opera Mobile 9.5), the magnetic keyboard is pretty
slick too and works pretty well. The device is thin and everything is
just awesome. It only has a few problems.
1: The device is also a
phone, it is speakerphone only. You better like bluetooth headsets
because that is all you are going to use. My customer has a different
phone he carries around, he was using a Universal before but not as a
phone, just PDA.
2: The thing is just slightly tall/wide to fit into
any pockets (shirt pocket, front pant pockets) so you need a holster to
carry this, which is slightly annoying.

Now, it is expensive, but why would you want it over a laptop?
Battery
life. This is a PDA so your battery life is stellar. I have a 12″
tablet with a 13 hour battery life and it wouldn’t be able to touch the
Advantage.”

My summary is from my comment here:

Shahryar @ Aug 9th 2008 2:27AM

A
little more on the personal preference side, but if this (or something
like this) was out on Sprint, I’d buy it. I use two phones – my main,
personal phone (an N76 w/ T-mo) and my secondary, pda-phone (Mogul w/
Sprint). My set up of T-mo first/Sprint second isn’t changing anytime
soon because of the way my price plans are laid out.

So, w/
Sprint indefinitely set as my secondary phone, since I don’t use the
secondary phone all that often, I wouldn’t mind having to use speaker
or the bluetooth headset for calls. I’d care more about the data-driven
stuff I could do on it and this device seems like it it would do it.

I would also like WiMAX on it since WiMAX is coming soon (or out already?) to Baltimore and DC this year.

Sigh, this is a sad post now. The goal of this post was to be a resource guide for my wife so she could go here and check out the links and info on her cool new Bday gadgets. However, both Dell & MacMall have screwed me. Dell finally shipped the Canon IS S5 Camera yesterday, but my MacMall order for the N82 is still on backorder and I’m caught up in back and forth emails between myself and MacMall’s customer service. They never told me that this product was going to be on backorder when I first placed the order. If I had known, I would have bought the phone from somewhere else.

Normally, getting a birthday gift for your wife is a bit of a big deal, but this year it was pretty easy. I had gotten her the Nokia 8801 in fall, 2006 and had wanted to replace it for her after voyaging myself into the Nokia N series in late fall 2007 with my N76. Having the internet on your mobile was the biggest thing I could see her wanting. Also, texting on the 8801 was annoying so I wanted to get her something easier to text with. Getting her an iPhone was a bit out the question since we with Tmobile. Sure we could hack it, but it would be too hard to stay on top of the hacks. Plus, her and I are both big texters and I’m not sure how any big texter would feel about the lack of a hard keyboard.

The N95 was what I had always been eyeing, but it seemed a bit bulky. Then around November, 2007, the perfect phone came out for her: The Nokia N82.

Here are some of the first pieces of info on this phone from Engadget & Engadgetmobile. In the Engadget post, you’ll see my comment here.

Integrated GPS was also something this phone carries, but I’m not sure if that’s something she’ll totally need. But maybe it will come in handy.

I sort of took advantage of a more recent post on engadget which mentioned the N82 to ask on where good places would be to buy this phone. A few kind people helped me out. Also, some people helped me out over on slickdeals also. In particular, this thread in the Help me find a deal section specifically for N82. This other thread was also interesting because the thread was about the E65, but we started discussing the full fledged browser on the phone. I’m still a bit confused on which phone this was – the E65? or another phone.

The N82 will also come in handy for something else, and I’ll get back to it after the next section.

One of the other things I was looking to get also was a new camera for my wife, but at the same time, this would be more of an “our” thing as we’re looking forward to using this on vacations. I had added a Canon Deal alert on slickdeals and started paying attention to some new threads that were popping up, mainly on SLR cameras. I had inquired on one of the SLR threads and justal recommended not to get an SLR, but perhaps a Point & Shoot with Hybrid functionality. So when the Canon IS S5 slickdeal came around over here, I asked around a bit and finally purchased. The Canon IS S5 thread I just linked to has some nice questions and answers on the camera, but also, this thread has some real nice info on lenses and photography in general (especially interesting is this short discussion on HDR that starts with this post check out the beautiful Chicago shots). Also, this is another Canon thread which talks about a hidden menu to mess with some options.

So there was a post I saw in the Canon S5 thread I mentioned above where a guy said he was looking to own the S5 and an SD870 which is a dedicated P&S (there’s another more elaborate thread on the SD870 here if anyone’s interested). I thought for a bit on maybe getting this camera too for my wife to be her dedicated P&S camera. But, a) her Bday gifts would really start to get pricey for all 3 of these high end gadgets and b)… I noticed something else on the Nokia N82. Apparently, it has an amazing camera. So much so that in this thread over here, a user asks about getting rid of his N82 and EVERYONE tells him not to strictly on his camera alone. I asked in that thread if the camera’s so good that I could forget about getting a secondary P&S to go with the Hybrid S5 I purchased, but am still waiting on a response.

So, to my wife, I’m sorry your gifts aren’t here on your birthday. I meant well, placing my orders on April 11th. But, unfortunately, they are taking longer than expected. And to any other S5 or N82 owner who stumbles upon this thread, please take the time to place a comment here.

Here’s some additional info I thought I would post:
1) Here is some handy info from a slickdeals’ thread on rechargeable batteries (thanks nutz4utwo).
2) And this is a good site for info on digital photography (someone sent that info to me on slickdeals via private message)