Month: July 2005

Disconnected our second phone line from Qwest today.

The house was originally set up with two lines — the previous owners had an office set up down in the basement, and there other places where the second line jacked in (such as the kitchen). We activated that line early on to use for dial-up Internet, and used it for that for years and years (and it’s hard to believe I used to live with just 28.8k service — shared — at home).

We’ve had the broadband since December 2003. Since then, we’ve only once ever reconnected the phone connection, during one prolonged cable outage.

Margie’s been bugging me to drop the second line — usually when it would ring on the fax machine upstairs (from some junk caller, since it’s not a number we ever used for anything). Finally, as I was faxing out something this morning, I remembered and cancelled it. We’ll have to connect the fax machine to the main line (and turn the ringer off), but that’s no problem.

Don’t think we’ll be cutting off the main line any time soon –VoIP seems still a bit dodgy from a regulatory and reliability standpoint, and our cell service here is often sketchy. But it’s down to a single line now.

Time marches on.

I usually find John Dvorak entertaining but infuriating — whenever I know something about what he speaks, technology-wise, he’s usually full of hot air.

That said, his column on idiosyncratic engineering should be a must-read for every hardware vendor out there.

There are exactly two points of sanity in the world of high technology. One is the recharging connector for Nokia phones. The other is the recharging connector for Toshiba notebooks. The manufacturers don’t keep changing them.

I probably have ten Nokia chargers, so if I want to charge a phone, there is one around someplace. The same with the Toshiba. I know of only one model of Portégé that used a different connector, and it wasn’t on sale for very long. Thus when I grab my notebook, I can easily find a power supply for it, since all the old ones work with the new machine. This isn’t rocket science, but you’d think it was when you look around.

It’s true. There’s no reason why every notebook shouldn’t be able to use the same power brick, every cell phone the same charger (and same headset — one place where Nokia falls down), every digital camera the same mini-USB cable.

Well, there is a reason. Dvorak discounts it, but clearly it’s motivated by greed. These tech manufacturers make a tidy sum from folks getting a second charger, a new proprietary headset, etc. In some cases, that’s goofy (mini-USBs on cameras, for example), but in other cases, someone has put together a business case that shows it makes money somewhere. At the very least — in those cases where the gear is common within a given company line (which is less often than you think, Dvorak notes) — it might create some brand loyalty.

At least, that is, as long as the items involved are not commodities. Yes, if you want the latest tech, you’re going to be willing to pay for it and put up with paying for extra cables. Nobody bought the latest cell phone from company X because it promised to use the same charger as a Nokia (or, more powerfully, decided not to because it didn’t).

But if I were going for a low-end phone, a less-than-cutting edge bit of tech, I might actually pay attention to an ad that noted that it uses an industry standard charger. Certainly, for phones, I look for the standard 0.25mm headset being mentioned; it actually has been a factor (though not the deciding one) in vetting models.

Sooner or later, “works with everything” is going to be recognized — by the public and the manufacturers — as a strong selling point. Can’t come soon enough for me.