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There are few things that bother me more than cables and cords, especially Wall Warts. Why does my camera charger need a 6ft cable?

Well, I’ve been searching the intertubes for almost a year to find “short power cords” to use with my many chargers, dc adapters and so on. This was made difficult by the fact that I had no idea what to search for.

A few months ago my quest was complete. Behold the C7 Figure Eight Plug from Cyberguys.com. At $1.79 each get a bunch of them!

I ordered a dozen 1 ft power cords. These are suitable to replace any 2 prong AC plug (NEMA 1-15 ungrounded plug) with a C7 figure 8 ungrounded plug. I went around my house cleaning up cable disasters everywhere.

Here you can see the diversity of my long cables that I no longer use:

and this is what I replaced them all with:

Since around 2001 I made the switch to digital flat panel displays and never looked back. My first display predated DVI by about a year instead utilizing a Digital Flat Panel (DFP) adapter.

I was always annoyed by the whole Digital <-> Analog <-> Digital process when using an analog VGA adapter with a flat panel. I found it crazy that you had to convert to analog when the display was digital to begin with. All Laptops have always had a native digital interface to their displays. So why should external displays be any worse?

When DVI hit the scene it got much easier, but it’s rare to see a laptop with a DVI adapter (that’s not a Mac of course). This always annoyed me.

Now some docking stations for laptops do have DVI, which is great, but not all (like my Lenovo X61).

The reasons why laptops don’t have DVI adapters? Size. It’s much larger than VGA. Although DVI is backwards compatible with VGA, and Apple has figured out a way to shrink DVI, PC maker still don’t bother and stick to Analog. Another excuse? projectors are mainly VGA at most companies.

If size is a problem, you could theoretically add HDMI ports (which is backwards compatible with DVI) but apparently many laptop makers don’t do this either due to cost and needing to also have VGA (projectors).

Supposedly, DisplayPort will solve this all, but I have yet to see someone like Lenovo move to DisplayPort even though Dell is.

DisplayPort is a digital display interface standard (approved May 2006, current version 1.1 approved on April 2, 2007) put forth by the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA). It defines a new license-free, royalty-free, digital audio/video interconnect, intended to be used primarily between a computer and its display monitor, or a computer and a home-theater system.

[wikipedia]

In the meantime, what can you do if you want DVI on a laptop that only has a VGA port? And what are the advantages to DVI anyway? Well I like DVI because:

1. Ghost Free images (no horizontal or vertical sync)
2. No calibration necessary (only brightness and contrast)
3. Pixel for Pixel perfection

A few months ago I purchased a novel solution to this problem, a DisplayLink Adapter made by Sewell.

DisplayLink is a company that produces the chipset that supports DVI and VGA over USB and it’s licensed to a number of companies including Samsung, Sewell,

When I first got it I had a number of problems mainly due to their driver. The good news is that in the last few months, their driver support (particularly on Vista) has improved a great deal. In fact when I got the device the driver didn’t even work, but their tech support staff is extremely competent and they fixed the driver in a matter of days.

So how does it work? Well, it’s OK. The main issues I have with it are:

1. It uses quite a bit of CPU, and the CPU usage will occasionally spike which interrupts my Bluetooth mouse which I find annoying.
2. Occasionally when undocking I get a message saying the USB device is in use and I can’t undock.
3. It doesn’t work during boot of course, which means that if you need to interact with your BIOS or say enter your BitLocker PIN you are SOL.
4. Max resolution of 1600 x 1200.

I hope that in the future that Windows adds native support for USB style display adapters, but for now, these are some serious limitations.

Furthermore, USB doesn’t have the same bandwidth as DVI so no high frame rate activity like Games. Video works ok (not HD) though.

I should have blogged about this earlier, but I saw Ed Bott referenced DisplayLink on a post about using 3 monitors.

In closing, this technology is pretty good today but not perfect. If you are a VGA snob like me, then this is a viable alternative with some gotchas.

Wow, what a long day.

It started like this:

7:30 am

Drive to the Belmont AT&T store to meet a co-worker (Andy). Waited in line for 5 minutes and aborted.

8:10 am

Arrived at Stanford Shopping Center, witnessed the 500 or so person line and aborted.

8:30 am

Arrived in the parking lot of the Mountain View AT&T store, did a U-turn an went to work.

9 am - 5 pm

Was ridiculed by co-workers who were looking for my shiny new iPhone. One co-worker (who shall remain nameless) convinced his 12 year old son to wait in line for close to 4 hours and got an iPhone! Then he called me in a meeting from his new 3G iPhone to taunt me.

6:00 pm

Arrived back at the Stanford Shopping Center. Got in line and it was moving really well. after 1 hour I had moved half way up. Then it turns out that a bunch of Apple employees went off shift so the progress in the line slowed. It took me 2 more hours to move the same distance I did in 1 hour.

Anyway, while in line I was instructed to call 611 on my phone and remove my 15% corporate discount or I would not be walking out of the store with a phone. I was told I'd have to do that or else my transaction would fail. I was also told I could call back on Monday and add it back??? WTF. Weird.

Anyway, when I got in the store I answered a bunch of questions.... yes, yes, yes, yes, 16GB Black. They only had a few yet, and had not sold out of anything yet.

A few minutes later I was $550 poorer (no worries, my iPhone fund has exactly $550 in it) because I did not qualify for a subsidy... half the price my ass.

What is interesting is that they did not unbrick or activate my phone. I just walked out with a shrink wrapped box. The minute I walked out my BlackJack II stopped working. I guess they nuked my SIM. Anyway, 10 minutes later I was home, accepted the 500th Apple EULA of the year, and have a working 3G iPhone with my corporate email and a bunch of cool apps like SmugShot.

I'll post more info when I've played around with this thing.

I feel like I did back in 6th grade when I got my first Mac! (A Mac II cx with an Apple 13inch RGB monitor).

I knew this would happen. As time went on and details emerged, my prediction of how miserable it’s going to be trying to buy an iPhone is going to come true.

You see, now that AT&T is wearing the pants, it’s doing it’s usual business of making things as complicated as possible ensuring that it’s making as much money as possible and making your job as a consumer as difficult as possible.

According to a few sites, including Engadet, there are a few different prices for the iPhone depending on your situation.

• iPhone 3G will be available for $199 (8GB) and $299 (16GB) for iPhone customers who purchased an iPhone prior to 7/11, customers activating a new line with AT&T and current AT&T customers who are eligible for an upgrade
• Existing AT&T customers who are not currently eligible for an upgrade discount can purchase iPhone 3G for $399 for the 8GB model or $499 for the 16GB model. Both options require a new two-year service agreement.

So how do I know if I’m eligible for an upgrade discount? Who knows. I can guarantee that the dude at the AT&T store is going to do everything in their power to make sure I pay the full non subsidized price. That’s been my experience for the past 6 years (starting with Cingular and now AT&T). I would sometimes even bring printouts from the AT&T website showing the price of a device with my corporate pricing etc and they would ignore it and refuse to sell to me.

So this begs the question. How are the Apple employees in the Apple store going to know how much to charge you for the phone? Are the tapping into the state of the art AT&T Siebel Customer Database? I don’t think so.

I think this pretty much ensures that I’m going to go to the Apple store to get my iPhone because I’m betting that the Apple employees are going to be more motivated to sell me an iPhone and get my but out of the store. But really, I’m not sure how this is going to work out.

In fact I am 100% certain I am not eligible for the upgrade price. How do I know this? Well I logged on to my AT&T online account and clicked “Upgrade Phone” and it told me:

Not sure where it’s getting the 04/15/2009 date. Apparently a number of factors picked a pretty arbitrary date. All I know is 04/15/2009 is > 7/11/2008 and that’s all I care about .

I’ve made it very clear to everyone I know that I’m getting an iPhone v2. Now that the iPhone has Exchange support, there is no reason for me NOT to get one. I’ve been using Windows Mobile since my Motorola MPX-200 (Windows Mobile 2002 I think) and it’s time for a change. I want, no I NEED an iPhone .

Personally, the most exciting things about the iPhone are:

• The long tail of applications that will exist. It’s clear that the iPhone is going to get the lion’s share of attention and everyone will be popping out iPhone apps.
• Safari for browsing the web (and great optimized web apps)
• Touch
• the features of an iPod

To be honest, I have an iPod Touch right now and I actually consider that the music playing experience sucks pretty bad when compared to a Zune or an old skool iPod. There is simply no replacement for having hard buttons to control audio and the whole screen flip thing is annoying.

And while I am at it, iTunes has turned into a slow bloated buggy application that I can’t stand to use any more… and the new Zune Player kicks its butt. Apple needs to throw away the Windows code base and start over with something that is actually a Windows App and not as terrible as QuickTime on Windows.

But anyway, it won’t change the fact that I have $400 earmarked for my iPhone v2.

As I watched the WWDC keynote on Monday I could not help but notice a few things.

1. Apple is an incredibly childish company. Apple always used to take pot shots at Microsoft (even though the Mac would have died a slow death a few years back w/o Mac Office) but I find it amazing that they still say things like “ActiveStink” even though they also need “ActiveStink” to be relevant to any enterprise or edu. I find that the Apple commercials are funny and generally in good taste, but not these kinds of comments. I’ve always believed this comes from their resentment of having to rely on Microsoft for anything.
2. They always talk about how this version kicks the pants off the last version. They do this with a straight face even though the joke is on you because last year they were selling you the same crap telling you how you don’t need 3G or Video or Intel Processors and how RISC is going to take over the world and put Intel out of business. You know what I mean, all that baloney about how PhotoShop is 100x faster on a PowerPC than an Intel chip and at the end of the day, guess what’s powering a Mac now.
3. Then there is stuff like “look, this company wrote this crazy cool application in 2 minutes! Our dev tools are so easy, you can lean Objective C and crank out an iPhone app and port your application in a few days”. This reminds me of when Apple had Adobe on stage and convinced the world that recompiling PhotoShop for Mac OS X took them only 2 weeks. It took them 2 years I think to actually ship.

But nevertheless, it doesn’t matter. People in the audience and most folks can’t help but be fanboys. I mean the Cult of Macintosh/Apple/iPhone is a powerful thing, and if Apple has shown anything over the years it’s that they are only increasing the number of folks who fall in line and eat this stuff up. Who can blame them? Apple makes me excited about hardware and technology. I almost always walk into an Apple store when I am near one just because.

In my mind there is nothing more exciting to a geek than sitting at a keynote and watching the grand master walk you through each and every new feature you are going to get your grubby hands on in a few short weeks. If I could get this for every product I cared, or loved I’d be so happy… especially if they could do it like Steve Jobs! Tell me what other product out there gets such a careful and anticipated unveiling than every single thing Apple makes?

I know you got excited that the new headphone jack now allows for normal headphones w/o an adapter even though this is a bug and never should have been that way in the first place, but you don’t even think about that because you’ve already forgiven Apple! When Apple got rid of SCSI and nuBus and moved to USB we all said “thank you Apple, now I can purchase all new peripherals!”.

See how it works?

Anyway, I’m looking forward to my 3G iPhone.

I’m NOT looking forward to the big ass disaster it’s going to be purchasing one on July 11th. AT&T is going to screw this up, in my case I bet they will tell me I’m not eligible for an upgrade since I got a phone less than 2 years ago. So I really have no idea what’ it’s going to cost me and more than likely they will completely bullocks up my account adding the right data plan and all that nonsense. I do know I’ll probably spend a few hours in an AT&T store and some amount of time arguing with them.

BTW, the new iPhone isn’t cheaper and if you think so then you can’t do the math.