ChrisDavisTech.com

I am not in a 2-year service contract anymore with Verizon Wireless and called to have my current broken handset swapped to another handset I own. I was informed that the phone I wanted to activate was not "allowed" to refuse a data Internet plan of $29.99 in addition to my voice plan. I explained I was not re-signing up for a two-year commitment and only wanted voice service like I presently have with my current phone (also a Windows smartphone). I am well aware of the data plan requirement on new 2-year activations as they do this to subsidize the price of the phone. The problem I have with it is I am already out of my contract and my friend (where I got the phone from) already had the phone on a two year plan and upgraded equipment - so Verizon is "double dipping". They insist it is a "feature" that can not be removed yet they charge for it separately - if it is part of the plan, its part of the plan and not an add-on feature. If in fact it is a feature, then the consumer should be entitled to opt-out -- especially if they are no longer under contract!

There are plenty of legitimate reasons for owning a smartphone and not wanting a data plan. The full qwerty keyboard is easier to type text messages (which I don't use either) but also for calendar entries, contact entries, reminders, and the mobile office for Word and Excel. Another fact is the phone also has WiFi capability, and with so many places offering free WiFi not to mention having it at home, why would I want to duplicate service?!? The camera is often better in a smartphone, so Verizon's suggestion to get a free flip phone is an insult to my intelligence and would mean not only a step down in technology and require me to carry two devices, but also would require me to sign up for the 2-year term again. That is what I wanted to avoid in the first place!!

Their phones call #777 to "authenticate your user" from what I can gather about how their data plans are provisioned, so the inability for them to turn this feature off is garbage!

I am pretty sure all seven of my family members with Verizon are all out of our contracts - I know Verizon doesn't care about a puny seven customers, but maybe if enough people complain to the FTC and write letters to Verizon's executives and vote with your wallet and tell everyone you know it will do the trick!

The month of June - June 1st to be exact, marked my fifth year anniversary of Christopher Davis Technology Consulting!

Thank you!

Ubuntu's released their latest upgrade 10.04 a couple days ago and I must say I am extremely pleased so far. Everything seems to work well and it has a very polished look about it. They have improved upon the software center by adding sub-categories to make finding the right software even easier. I have heard complaints that removing GIMP from the base install was a bad idea. I really would have to disagree. People who know GIMP will not have a problem downloading it, and for the rest of us its overkill (and I put myself into this group) we won't miss it. When the time comes that you need something more in the way of photo editing than F-Spot provides, there are plenty of great software titles a few clicks away. In terms of identifying with the masses, I think Ubuntu is headed in the right direction for sure. I don't really Twitter that often nor do I really find myself "Facebooking" but there are plenty of people out there that do, so this release should appeal to an even bigger audience than ever before.

One of the first things I noticed was speed! Faster boot times, faster load times on OpenOffice.org (with a shiny new Oracle sticker over the Sun Logo from Oracle's recent acquisition), and overall much more elegant looking! Oh and Chromium browser is super speedy -- download it!

One thing had me a little mad but was partially my fault was when I lost one of my screens while changing the screen resolution. I am almost certain it has to do with the my hardware configuration having a few video output modes. I have it hooked up to a 17" monitor which I knew for sure was capable of 1280x1024 resolution. When it finished installing, it got set to 1024x768. Monitor Preferences treats my VGA output correctly but identified my S-video as a Laptop screen. When I bumped up the resolution I did not turn off the s-video, and my extended (blank) desktop - no menu or system tray icons - became my "main" VGA display. The Xorg.conf file does not get created by default in this release, and I wasn't sure how to revert my settings!

Luckily after searching around, I found an article on Ubuntu Geek which did the trick! "

So it would appear that your settings get stored in a hidden xml file in your home folder. Delete that and it just gets recreated with defaults.

Since I had no menus, I pressed alt-F2 to access applications and was able to launch Firefox (to find the solution) and Terminal (to fix it) So the second time I fixed my resolution I made sure to disable the other display and I put an icon on the system tray area just to be on the safe side.

We all know we are supposed to backup our files, and almost no one does until its too late. If your hard drive dies, your data might be lost for good. Even if you do back things up, how current is it, and do you know how to put it back? These days so much of our lives are stored as digital bits and bytes on a computer, and our data has become more valuable than the hardware we save it on. Backup has always been rather difficult, time consuming, and many types of backup solutions have come and gone over the years. My problem has always seemed to revolve around a few things:
1.    Disciplining myself and keeping a backup regiment that includes incremental changes
2.    Having a backup is a good start, but being able to restore the backup is key
3.    keeping data from several computers in sync
In the last few years I think #3 has been my biggest problem, as is for millions of others...

When I was growing up it was commonplace for households to have several phones and TV sets. This trend moved on to include cars, cell phones and now computers. In multiple computer families, precious data has become spread across several desktops, laptops, cell phones - and online mediums such as email. Mass storage drives are cheap, and home file servers are becoming more and more commonplace, but both tend to lack two important features - ease of use/setup and ultra portability/convenience.

With the price of storage becoming so insanely cheap, and virtually everyone that owns a computer being online, online backup makes more sense than ever before. Whatever your excuse used to be - too difficult, too expensive, or just being too plain lazy - now you have very little reason not to. Recently I heard about a cross-platform file backup/sync tool called SugarSync for Mac and Windows.

What caught my attention was how it not only securely stores your data in "the cloud" but how you can easily setup additional computers to be synchronized! For those of you on the go not only does this mean you don't need to carry around a portable hard drive (which may I remind you can get lost or stolen just as easily as your laptop can) but you don't have resort to emailing files to yourself. Plus, SugarSync keeps track of file revisions and can be accessed by signing into a personalized website that gets made for you when you sign up! Wow. Now we're talking! Now I can go about my work and have the backup software backup files and folders of my choice automatically. I can keep the data current on more than one computer even when they are geographically seperated. As a bonus, I can access my data on a web-equipped mobile phone on iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and Android devices! The best part is a basic account gives you 2GB of data for FREE!

Plans for additional storage and features are very reasonably priced at just $5 per month and when you refer a friend, both parties get free additional storage!

Currently, there is no Linux desktop support, but who knows - since there is an android app, I'm sure it will only be a matter of time. Until then, for those Ubuntu users out there, why not sign up for a Ubuntu One account!