The iPhone 4 "Death Grip" Explained

Update 7/16/2010: Apple isn't recalling the iPhone 4. Instead they are offering a free case, which is actually a surprise to me. I knew they wouldn't recall the iPhone 4, but Steve Jobs did try to make the claim that all phones have the death grip problem; they do not, this is a problem specific to the iPhone 4.

What is the iPhone 4 "death grip"? When you hold the new iPhone a certain way, your cellular signal is greatly reduced. The old iPhones were great devices, but they had trouble with the phone part. The result was AT&T was being blamed for what was an Apple design flaw. Granted, AT&T doesn't exactly have a great network. But bashing AT&T was already popular before the iPhone, so this just fed the stereotype. The new iPhone planned to fix that issue by placing the antenna on the outside of the phone. In fact, there are two antennas on the exterior of the phone: One for the cellular network and the other for the GPS. The result is the iPhone works as well as every other phone, a big improvement over previous iPhones.

But the death grip is caused by holding the phone in such a way that your finger makes contact between the two antennas thus causing a short between the two. The fix is simple. Consumer Reports recommends duct tape all around the iPhone 4. You can also buy a case for the phone for $30 to $40. Many people think that such a case should be given for free, but have fun making Apple do that.

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Posted by Wade Burchette at 4:50 AM - Categories: General | Hints and Tips

Updated Experienced Office 2010

This is an update to my previous blog entry about Office 2010. If you haven't read that one yet, start there and then continue on.

The more I use Office 2010, the more I like. It still is not worth upgrading from Office 2007. Be that as it may, Office 2010 continues to show why Office is by far the best office suite available. The best new features I have found is the already mentioned Outlook improvements, as detailed in the previous blog entry, and the print menu. The print menu is excellent, but it does requires an adjustment. The new print menu puts the most common print features right there in front of you. You do not have to dig for them. Below is an example of the old style print menu. To get any print options, you must push the properties button, as shown in the second picture.

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0 comments - Posted by Wade Burchette at 7:30 PM - Categories: General | Reviews

New Study Shows People Read Slower On E-book Readers

Thinking about getting a Kindle or iPad to read your books? (Techs-on-Call is getting an iPad soon, just so I can give an objective opinion and help you use your iPad.) A new study suggests paper is still better, but not by much.

The study took 32 individuals were asked to read a short story by Ernest Hemmingway. The only individuals that were asked were people who read liked reading. Because of errors for some of the participants, only 24 individuals were actually used to record the time it took to read the story. Each person was asked questions about what he or she read to make sure they were really reading the story and not skimming over the material. Every participant did read the story properly.

The study concluded that reading on an iPad is 6.2% slower than reading on paper and reading on the Kindle is 10.7% slower. However, because of the small sample size and statistical margin for error, it cannot be said that reading on the iPad is faster than reading on the Kindle or other e-book readers that use e-ink. What can be said is that reading on paper is still the fastest way to read. All of the participants said reading on a computer screen was not enjoyable. However, reading on the iPad or Kindle was just slightly less enjoyable than reading a book.

What this study did not address is the eye-strain from looking at a backlit screen such as on the iPad and computer monitor.

Link: iPad and Kindle Reading Speeds

0 comments - Posted by Wade Burchette at 11:30 AM - Categories: General

Clearing Up Cell Phone Confusion

You cannot help but see the commercials. "Our 3G is better than your 3G." "Yeah but we have more 3G." "Oh yeah, we have 4G." What does it all mean? The G part means generation. So 4G means 4th generation. But you need to know that there is no standards organization that defines what 3G and 4G really is. Be that as it may, there is a consistency to the generation reference.

To fully understand 3G and 4G, you will need to have a basic knowledge of cell phone technology. Obviously, the first cell phones were analog and voice communication was much like FM radio. Each tower had an area for which it would operate, which is called a cell. Thus the name cell phone. However, analog phones were prone to static and people could listen to your conversations with little effort. Thus the need for digital phones.

However, you don't just say "be digital!" Sound is analog, thus there needed be a standardization in converting analog sound to a digital signal. Plus there needed to be standards on how the phone will transmit that digital signal because towers were going to be receiving many digital signals. In the US and Canada, two standards are currently being used: GSM and CDMA. Most of the world uses only GSM. All you need to know is that G in GSM stands for Global. Verizon and Sprint chose CDMA; however, Verizon is converting to GSM. AT&T and T-Mobile chose GSM. Altell used CDMA in some in some markets and GSM in others, but they were CDMA primary. The original GSM and CDMA standard is now called 1G, 1st generation. 1st generation technology could only be used for voice, no internet. All things being equal, GSM is much better.

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0 comments - Posted by Wade Burchette at 2:33 PM - Categories: General

June 2010 Technology Update

A big announcement was made by Intel recently, but other than that, the three most important hardware companies for your personal computer -- AMD, Intel, and NVidia -- have been silent. No new significant advancement have been made this year, but in about 12 months from now, AMD is introducing a new CPU that may change how low-cost and specialized computers are made. Then again, it may not and it may not ever happen. This blog will describe what the three big hardware companies are up to and how it applies to you, the average person. We are going to start first with the company that is in sore straights, NVidia.

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Posted by Wade Burchette at 8:00 PM - Categories: General | News

Be Careful With Facebook

Facebook has become an internet phenomon. It is now part of our vocabulary, along with other social networking sites such as Twitter and MySpace. People who are on Facebook love it. Some businesses have their own Facebook or MySpace or Twitter page. Techs-on-Call does not, and I do not either. There are many reasons for this.

The first reason is time. We all have a finite amount of time. I don't have the time to maintain a Facebook page and run my business. The blog will cover everything I need to share, without any the negatives with social networking sites.

One of those negatives is the lack of privacy found on social networking sites. Sure, you can restrict your information to "friends" only. But as the June 2010 issue of Consumer Reports notes, some key information is open to everyone. Information you post on social networking sites can be used against you. Employers do check your background through such websites. Law enforcement, with a warrant, can get the information too and use anything against you. Even if you restrict your information to friends, you may have a "friend" who is someone who never knew personally.

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Posted by Wade Burchette at 3:22 AM - Categories: Annoyances | General | Privacy

Experiences With Office 2010

I was able to install Office 2010 on April 22. This version will be released to the general public soon, so here are some of my experiences with it.

Office 2010 is not a major improvement over Office 2007. In fact, if you have Office 2007, don't bother upgrading. Office 2010 does improve the ribbon interface at the top, but not enough to pay an extra fee to get. Gone is the funny Office 2007 icon in the upper-left corner. It is replaced by a tab that simply says "File". I like this new implementation. When you click on it, all the file options cover the entire screen. Most of the screen then has recent and pinned documents and recent and pinned places used to open a file. You can then select the file info options, print options, and send options. Everything that the Office icon button had is here, but now it fills the screen.

Another feature of Office 2010 is native 64-bit code. This is handy for large files and large number calculations, specifically in Excel. So far, I have yet to notice any speed improvements in going 64-bit. You cannot upgrade to the 64-bit version. You must un-install your older 32-bit version of Office. After installing the 64-bit version, Office imports all your old settings automatically. I made a backup of my emails, but Outlook 2010 copied all that over even though I un-installed the entire Office 2007 suite. So upgrading to the 64-bit version is painless. The only gripe is I had to re-pin all of my pinned Office documents in Windows 7. But that is a Windows 7 issue, not Office 2010.

The first thing I noticed was the default color scheme went from a cheerful light blue to a depressing light gray. The first thing I did was change it to Office 2007 default color of light blue. You can find those options under the file tab. The nice thing is when you change the color scheme in one program, the effect is applied to every Office program. Very nice.

Outlook has nice improvements and is much better than Outlook 2007. It has the autocorrect options that are found in Word. For example, in Outlook 2007, if you type "THe", it would leave it as "THe". Word 2007 would change "THe" to "The", always fixing the accidently capitalized second letter. Now Outlook 2010 automatically fixes the accidently capitalized second letter. A nice feature for those who type really fast. At the bottom of emails is a picture icon. If you have a picture of that person and if you add that picture to that person's contact, it shows up there. The picture also shows up at the top beside the email information. You can also add your contacts from social networking sites and if the contact has a picture, it is added. When you click on the person's picture at the bottom, Outlook shows a brief history it has on that person. Other options include showing all emails you have from this person, all attachments that person sent you, and some other things. The attachments part is nice, you don't need to search for an old attachment anymore. The new Outlook is great.

To sum up: I don't really see much improvement in the other Office programs I've used. If you were going to buy Office, I would wait for Office 2010. But if you already have Office 2007, I wouldn't upgrade. Microsoft Office is still far and away the best office suit out there. Open Office is free, but is not as good as Microsoft Office. I almost consider Word and Excel a must-have application for everybody. Office 2010 is a minor improvement, unlike Office 2007. All things being equal, you want Office 2010 over Office 2007. If, however, you can get Office 2007 at a discount, that is the way to go.

Update 7/12/2010: More information about Office 2010.

0 comments - Posted by Wade Burchette at 1:40 PM - Categories: General | Reviews