Comments for Freyburg

Comment on Biofuels cause of food crisis by jabberwocky

jabberwocky — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 00:24:28 +0000

Well I don’t know were they are getting there information, but I would think that the cost of Gas having gone up so much as well as the cost for insecticides, and fertilizers have also skyrocketed in price as well that has caused the cost of producing food to increase more that biofuels are.

Comment on Linksys router review (now Mac compatible) by david fay

david fay — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 08:51:13 +0000

Chris,
I have a Linsky’s g router too and want to install dd-wry but cannot find instructions how to do it with a mac. It seems the ones I find have a pc (.exe) file to download. can you share how you did it?

Comment on Canadian iPhone data plan is terrible by Jordan

Jordan — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:27:29 +0000

FWIW, I left a link to my Rogers complaint in my siggy above.

Comment on Another Mac | LIfe iPhone article…. by Jean-Paul Samson

Jean-Paul Samson — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 21:13:31 +0000

One of the people you quoted, John Biehler, dismissed the data plans as being insufficient: no unlimited data. He has now tried using data on AT&T during a trip down to the U.S. and found his usage for one day amounted to 15MB, consisting of two hours of web surfing, regularly checking his e-mail, a few map lookups, etc, but no video.

So he now concedes that Roger’s data allocations are reasonable. He just dislikes all the other plan limitations (e.g. voice minutes, SMS, etc.) and costs.

Looking around the Internet, I haven’t encountered anyone exceeding 600 or 700MB per month with their data usage on the current iPhone. Mind you, 3G might very well change that.

Comment on Canadian iPhone data plan is terrible by Jen

Jen — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:12:45 +0000

I think I’ll have to agree with you on this one. I’m sticking with the plan I currently have. These prices and features just do not cut it.

Jen Thomas
Glyphius Software

Comment on Canadian iPhone data plan is terrible by Jean-Paul Samson

Jean-Paul Samson — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:19:32 +0000

It has been suggested that the writer confused the value-priced extras bundles introduced with the iPhone as voice-only plans. As we all are well aware, you can’t get a voice-only plan for $15 period.

But oddly, a voice-only plan for a Rogers iPhone actually makes the deal seem more attractive to me!

Comment on Canadian iPhone data plan is terrible by Chris Burgess

Chris Burgess — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:05:02 +0000

Courtesy Jean-Paul, this article indicates data plan-less plans will be available:

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/topics/technology/story.html?id=e08b9229-c40e-4f84-b44d-e89e34ea7bbf

Comment on Canadian iPhone data plan is terrible by jabberwocky

jabberwocky — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 21:44:53 +0000

Well what with my current plan with rogers up the butt, I wouldn’t be paying all that much more than what I’m paying now if I just stick with the basic plan.

Caller ID don;t really care all that much about it.

There being no GPS in the iPodTouch actually makes it more attractive a device for me than the iPhone.

Comment on Canadian iPhone data plan is terrible by Jean-Paul Samson

Jean-Paul Samson — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 18:46:08 +0000

Did you guys honestly believe Rogers was going to offer unlimited data plans? Really? Heck, I’m with Bell, and on my three year contract they are still charging $30/MB for 1x data. Suffice it to say, 2 1/2 years into my contract, I’ve sent maybe two or three e-mails and that’s it. The Rogers plan looks like a dream in comparison.

Which makes it sound like I’m backing Rogers on this one. Well, I’m not. I’m a light cell phone user, partly because of the cost of the talk plans and per-minute charges penalizing you for exceeding your plan. Rogers has taken this same thinking and applied it to data. They are selling the iPhone as a moderate-use Internet device, but as we know, iPhone is Internet crack and is really a heavy-use Internet device.

While I think the $75 (300 minutes, 750GB data, +$6.95 access fee) would be a workable plan for me, I’m still not buying in because:
1. I refuse to be locked into another 3-year contract, to incur huge penalties if, at some point, my situation changes and I no longer wish to subscribe to a talk+data plan. (Do I have to relinquish my iPhone if I prematurely terminate my contract, too?)
2. Lots of web sites are heavy on advertising and, even worse, multi-media advertising. Are we really expected to pay through the nose for the 3G data consumed by these adverts? It reminds me of the days of fax machines, where junk mailers would send you ads at your expense for paper and toner.

Rogers has tried to make the plans more palatable by bundling HotSpot wi-fi access, which basically amounts to free Internet at Second Cup coffee shops. And what’s with not including caller id by default. Doesn’t everyone with a cell phone have caller id? A decade ago, caller id was included in all plans; time to put it back in and stop charging $5+ a month for the luxury.

One thing I found interesting were the penalties for exceeding your monthly data allocation: $30 for the first 60MB over (ouch) and then $30/GB thereafter. Part of the reason for this is to ensure that there is no cost benefit in abusing the various monthly pricing-plan tiers. But it also demonstrates at least how cheaply they could be offering data and still be making a healthy profit: $30/GB.

So yes, at this point, the iPod Touch looks to be the more attractive device, despite it being a stripped-down iPhone (no GPS, no telephone hardware, inferior LCD). No iPhone for me!

Comment on Canadian iPhone data plan is terrible by Warren

Warren — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 16:59:55 +0000

Yep, I can’t count the number of people who went out of their way to get the first gen iPhone and would have been perfectly happy to drop it for a new one…all it would take is unlimited data for a reasonable price. When even Apple zealots are saying “hey, maybe not…”, Rogers has really dropped the ball.