Big Boys’ Toys
Just a quick post, I know it’s been a while but I wanted to share some of my recent toys. Money’s been tight, so I haven’t been able to buy many gadgets lately, so that makes these even more special.
First up: Tivo
The story here: when we bought our house back in November, 2007, we were pretty overwhelmed with the prospects of a mortgage and all the new expenses and responsibilities that would entail. So we started cutting back on all kinds of things to save money — one of the things we cut was our TV service. (we had AT&T U-Verse at the apartment) So for over a year, all we had here at the house was broadcast TV. I got a couple of the digital TV converter boxes for a while, and the picture quality was great — but we still only got about 5 or 6 channels (not counting all the Spanish crap).
So a month or two ago I finally broke down and upgraded our FiOS service… We originally just had internet service – 5 Mbps download, 2 Mbps upload. But with our upgraded service, we ended up with 20 Mbps download & 5 Mbps upload internet, the FiOS “HD Extreme” TV package (not that we have an HD TV yet, but the only way to get a TV + Internet package deal was to go w/ this one. we already have dirt cheap VOIP phone service so we didn’t want it through Verizon), a DVR, and a set top box for the bedroom.
For those that may not know, our first DVR was a DirecTivo box (DirecTV satellite with a Tivo DVR) years and years ago (it was just in time for the Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” fiasco of 2004 – we rewound that incident at least 20 times!). No other DVR we’ve had has ever compared – including the FiOS Multimedia DVR. I did some checking, and found a TivoHD at Sears for a really good price ($100 cheaper than anywhere else), and discovered the price of a monthly Tivo subscription + FiOS cablecard (required for the Tivo to work with their service) came out to about the same price as the FiOS DVR monthly rental fee. So whenever I got my tax return, that was my first purchase.
We’re Tivoing fools once again. :) Other DVR manufacturers, please take note of the best remote ever made – the way it fits in your hand, and the intuitive layout of the buttons. Plus all the features/functionality mentioned here. :)
Next up: the HTC Touch Pro
Back in August I made the huge leap from a basic flip phone to a smartphone with the purchase of a Treo 800w. I loved it for a while, but had numerous problems, went through at least one replacement, and finally had Sprint swap it for a Mogul. A couple coworkers had that phone and I was convinced I would like it – but quickly grew to hate it. It was SO slow, and eventually I started having hardware problems. I’ve spent the last 6 weeks (or more) going back and forth to the Sprint store. I’ve gone through 2 replacement Moguls (after my original one).
So finally this past week the manager of the Sprint store I’ve been frequenting approved a free upgrade for me to an HTC Touch Pro.
I won’t get into all the juicy details (I’m sure there’s already way too much geek speak here for most of my readers), but suffice it to say that this phone kicks the Mogul’s ass! I’m still learning how to tweak it (haven’t had much time to scour the internet with so much going on at work), but straight out of the box it’s a million times better than the Mogul.
And the best part is that I didn’t have to use my “upgrade” to buy it — it was free for me! (as it should be considering what I paid for the piece-of-crap Mogul!)
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This entry was posted on Sunday, March 15th, 2009 at 8:50 am and is filed under Techie. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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