Chavvon Smith’s Blog

I’ve had a Verizon Palm Treo 700W for the last 2 years and when my contract expired I switched back over to ATT as fast as I could.  I’m not sure how good or bad the Verizon network is, but the Treo ruined the entire experience.  At first I thought it was Palm, but then after reading countless reviews, it seems to be the Palmo/Windows combination.

As I was looking at new phones on ATT, a few phones were in the race.  Iphone, blackberry curve, and Palmo Centro. After learning that I couldn’t get insurance on the curve or iphone (I have small kids), it was quickly narrowed down to the Centro.  It’s not as jazzy as the other two, but it does all I need.  Basic Internet, email, scheduling, and text.  In addition, they gave it to me for free. Whoohoo!!

I’ve had the phone for about 3 weeks now so I know it well enough to write the pros and cons of the phone.

Pros:

1.) Great size

2.) Nice finish

3.) Easy to navigate from section to section (email, phone, etc.)

Cons:

1.) It seems I always have to place a phone call twice.  The first call is always disconnected.

2.) The ringer stopped working until I dropped it one day and it worked again.

3.) Buttons are pretty small

4.)  It’s really annoying how it shows alerts in the top right hand corned and you need the stylus to access them

All in All, it’s a good phone, but I still have two weeks to decide if I’m going to keep it.

Chavvon Smith

I was helping a friend out with some finances over the weekend when he told me he had gotten some pay day loans he was having a hard time paying off. I asked some of the details about the loan and realized this is the biggest waste of money possible! This is how the loan was setup.

The initial loan was $800. He pays $129 per pay check (every two weeks), just to maintain the loan! Zero of this goes to the principle. The only way to pay off the loan is to pay $800 all at once.

Theoretically, if you had this loan for one year, you’d pay $3,354 in interest/fees or 419%. At that rate, you could have a 75% loan failure rate and still make money. If you’re considering a payday loan, don’t do it.

Chavvon Smith

When I walked into the office today, I was greeted by a friend telling me that he heard an announcement that the iphone was going to be reduced to $200 this weekend (the previous price was $499 and $599). The only problem was how Apple would deal with the buyers that just paid $500-$600 for the same device.

After checking around, I found the price was cut to $399 for the 8GB device. This was previously $599. All my friends that own the iphone are in love with it. I think sales will pick up quite a bit with these price cuts. We may see even more price reductions around Christmas time. I guess it’s time to get my own.

Chavvon Smith

A couple of days ago, my 3 yr old son decided it would be a good idea to put a popcorn kernel in his ear. When you think about it, extracting sounds easy. Tilt his head to the side, flush it with water, try a little vacuum, etc….nope. A 3 yr old has a very small ear canal, so when it’s pushed in with a very little 3 yr old finger, it tends to go quite deep. We could barely see it when we turned him on his side and tilted his head just right.

We tried flushing it with water, turning him on his side and flushing with water, we tried using a bulb to suck it out….and still no luck. After about 4 hrs, we finally gave up and went to the kids urgent care clinic. They tried the same things. Flushing with water, this special syringe full of water, and a bulb full of water. No luck. They told us we need to go see an ENT (ear, nose & throat) Dr. to get it removed.

We wake up the next day, it was midnight by the time we got home, and schedule a visit with the ENT. He looks in ear and says “oh, it’s in a good spot”. He then turns him on his side and while three people are holding him down, he goes in with this special tool and “pop”, out comes the seed.

A nice chunk of money and two days later, he’s now popcorn kernel free. It will be a while before we have popcorn in my house again

Chavvon Smith

I’ve been driving lately and with every mile, I hear a cha-ching sound go off in my head. With gas prices as high as they are, I hate driving to the store to buy milk because the price doubles by the time I get there and back. I’ve looked at hybrids, electric cars, you name it. Nothing has interested me until I saw this one. Take a look at www.TeslaMotors.com.

This is a new electric car that is scheduled for release in the summer of 2008. Listen to these specs:

0-60 mph: 4 seconds

top speed: 135 mph

miles per charge: 200

Cost to drive: ~2 cents per mile

Those are stats I can live with. It looks good, cheap to drive, and it’s fast! Now if I could just talk them down on that $98,000 intro price.

Chavvon Smith

I’ve been holding off on getting an iphone. Some of the features have been on my wish list for a long time, particularly, the visual voicemail. I have a Treo 700 right now, and other than the daily reboot, it works great. I do wish the browser could run javascript so I could log into certain websites, but o’well. The iphone looks cool, holds music, and plays movie, but for my business it’s not very good.

With the Treo, I can sync with MS exchange and I get emails in real time. It’s also on the Verizon network so I get nice download speed. The iPhone can only check for email in time increments (not real time), and doesn’t support MS Exchange to my knowledge. In addition, it’s on the ATT 3G network.

I hope in the next release it will support Exchange, be on a faster network, oh, and reduce some of the 500+ bugs that have been found in the device.

Christmas Maybe?

Chavvon Smith