Cellular South Readies NetBook Deal
I can’t tell you how impressed I was this week when I received an e-mail from Cellular South (our Mississippi-based cell provider for most of the phones in our office) touting an upcoming service — NetBooks. Pictured is what looks to be a 10-inch Dell Inspiron Mini, configured with a 160GB drive (current size as the one in my MacBook), Wi-Fi, 3G and, of course Windows XP.
Oops. Why would I be excited about a machine running Windows XP? Actually, I’m not excited about the Windows part. (Although they could do worse than XP.) I’m particularly excited about the fact that so many people have had luck running Mac OS X on a Dell Mini, and that my local cell phone company might make that prospect even easier for me by bundling the 3G wireless access. A little mini Mac OS X machine with unlimited 3G wireless is exactly the sort of thing that I probably don’t need — but that I wish I had anyway for my upcoming trip to Tucson, since I’m giving a presentation there and it would be very much fun to have the coolest gizmo in the room. (Shiny!)
And, OK, even if I couldn’t run Mac OS X on it, I’d probably still find a use for it — like taking it on sales presentations, sneaking off to the coffee shop to write opinion pieces or assigning it out to our reporters and interns who need 3G Web access while they report, blog and Twitter.
Assuming the data plan is as attractive as CS’ Blackberry plan ($50 a month for 500 minutes voice + unlimited data & text) then I may just be an early adopter.
Roku Rocks
Something I’ve wanted since the holidays is what I’ve wistfully referred to as “the Box” — the Roku Netflix Player, which is designed, essentially, to connect your TV to your broadband cable connection so that you can view Netflix’s Watch Instantly movies and TV shows without cabling your computer to your TV. 
For a few years now, I’ve been connecting my MacBook to the TV probably at least a few times per week, first to stream iTunes content, then, later, to watch a fair bit of Hulu, then to watch Amazon On Demand. The service changed frequently, particularly when we wanted to watch a particular show — Battlestar Galactica — because the rights situation with BSG kept changing…first you could buy it on iTunes, then it was gone; then it was free on Hulu, then the number of back episodes was cut down serverly; finally, it was easiest to just buy Season 4 on Amazon and stream it over the MacBook wired up to the TV.
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Palm Kills Foleo
I missed this last week when it came out, so I’m sorry for being late to the party, but I just realized that Palm has killed the Foleo before it made it to market. I think that’s too bad — it seems to me that the media panned the Foleo unfairly just because it didn’t understand what value this sort of tweener device could bring to the market — if done right. Maybe I’m wrong in thinking this could be a nice product, but then again, I’m a little weird — I tend to focus on tethering abilities in phones, broadband over mobile and so on, as I think that’s the way to go.
In either case, it won’t have a change to prove itself at this point.
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iPhone Tether for Net Access
I haven’t jumped on the iPhone bandwagon as of yet (mostly because I don’t want to move to AT&T service, given my company already has two mobile providers), but were I to get an iPhone, the ability to tether and use the Internet away from WiFi spots would be key. Just in the past six months I’ve done quite a bit of traveling and too often I’m either out of range of WiFi or the WiFi in a coffeeshop or hotel doesn’t work as advertised.
Check out the instruction here: Tether Your iPhone
Now that I’m running again with a MacBook (after the HP zt3000 died, I went on a quest to buy a new MacBook I’ll blog about later), WiFi reception seems excellent. But I know I’m going to end up in a deadzone here soon, and my Blackberry may not save me. (I’ve not yet tested switching over to Windows via Boot Camp to see if I can get the Blackberry tether to work. I should.)
I’m considering a Treo 700p for its Mac tethering capability (plus, via Alltel, the full data plan is $5 cheaper than the Blackberry for some reason) but will first need to justify the $250 for a used Treo 700p. If, in the interim, I decide instead to make the jump to iPhone (I’m already thinking about an iPhone more than I should, particularly considering the $299 4GB version or $349 for the 8GB Apple Refurb), it’s good to know there’s a tethered iPhone solution.
Palm Intros Foleo ‘Mobile Companion’
Palm Inc. today announced the Foleo, a “mobile companion” designed to work with a Treo.
The Foleo has a 10-inch screen and “full-sized” keyboard for answering e-mail received on your Treo, viewing attachments, surfing websites using the Treo’s Internet connection and viewing photos taken with the Treo.
The device communicates with the Treo via Bluetooth and can use either the phone for an Internet connection or its own built-in WiFi receiver. It’s got Dataviz Documents-to-Go built in, so you can edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents that you receive as attachments via your Treo Versamail account or via other e-mail such as Gmail and Yahoo! mail.
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