The Inimitable Have Tex Blog

A lot of companies are spending a small fortune to get unified communications, which, put simply, is where both voice and email end up in your email inbox. In addition to acting as a Skype competitor for making calls, Google Voice can replace your voicemail with a combination of text message alerts to your mobile phone, and MP3 attachments on emails.

The text message alerts attempt to turn the spoken word into text through voice recognition. The success of this varies wildly based on the speaker, often with hilarious results. The same text also appears in the email you receive, along with a link to download an MP3 file. The MP3 is a recording of the incoming call that would otherwise have gone to voice mail. Any media player with play them back (Windows Media Player, iTunes for example).

You can set up Google Voice on multiple lines, so that all your voice mail hits your inbox. That way you only have one place to look for your voice mail, and you can keep it for as long as you like.

It also solved another problem for me, the lousy, extra fee Visual Voice Mail app from Verizon on my Android phone. The dumb thing wouldn’t recognize bluetooth. It also required you to switch to speakerphone for each message, if you wanted that option.

Google Voice is a huge improvement, and the text sometimes informs, often entertains, and like all Google products, will probably improve over time.

Windows 7 is now installed on millions of PCs. I have two in everyday use in my business, a desktop that is my workhorse PC, and a netbook that is my travel unit and jack of all trades.

The desktop is fairly powerful, with an AMD Quad Core and 3GB of RAM. I have Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit loaded on it. I also run XP Mode, which is a full copy of XP Professional running under Virtual PC, and proves useful for running software that Windows 7 will not. I’m not a gamer, but the PC will do everything I ask of it, including photo editing of large images from my DSLR. It’s stable, and the 64 bit operating system seems to have none of the “gotchas” that prior iterations under XP and Vista suffered from. It runs most 32 bit software just fine, and I haven’t had any issues with device drivers.

The netbook is amazing. It’s an Acer, with an Atom N450 processor, and a 160GB drive. It came with 1GB of RAM and Windows 7 Starter Edition. It ran just fine, but I’m a tech, so I updated the operating system to Win 7 Pro, and upped the RAM to 2GB. I find it’s faster than just about any moderately priced Vista or XP laptop, which makes very little sense, except that the N450 has hyperthreading, and Windows 7 makes good use of it. There’s occasionally some video lag, if the machine launches a virus scan, for example. But these bargain basement netboooks are very practical tools. I’ve recommended the same setup to my customers who are road warriors, and the ones who have taken me up on it have been very satisfied.

Now to customer experiences, most have been very good. There’s one area  to watch out for though, desktops that you want to run via wireless adapters. I’ve been unable to find wireless adapters that work with either 32 or 64 bit Windows 7. Laptops have built-in wireless, so they have to work. Getting desktop wireless adapters working are the customer’s problem or mine. Even some All In One/Touchscreen PCs refuse to connect wirelessly. The adapter manufacturers either don’t care, or  their updates haven’t worked. ALL MAJOR BRANDS FAIL THIS TEST, don’t buy a Windows 7 desktop if you’re planning to use it wirelessly.

The only other thing to watch are printers. Some older units don’t have Windows 7 drivers, and for the ones that do, if you want to share them, you need to attach them to a Windows 7 PC. XP and Vista PCs can see printers attached to Windows 7 PCs, mostly not the other way around.

Overall, you can plan to migrate to Windows 7 from XP, and Vista without any major issues. If you need to run older applications, get either Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate, so you can get XP Mode. If you’ve already bought a PC with Home Premium, not to worry, the Anytime Upgrade feature will get you to Professional for about $90.00. I’ve connected Windows 7 PCs to both Server 2003 and Server 2008 networks without issue, and they are well behaved in mixed PC/Mac environments.

Jump on in, Windows 7 is fine!

9 months is a significant time period. All of us have spent that amount of time waiting to be born. Students spend about that much time each year in the course of their studies. I’ve now spent that amount of time with my Verizon Droid phone. A lot has happened in that time period.

The  Droid has gone through 2 system updates, Apple has continued to experience success with its iPhone, although the most recent iteration has given the company and its customers some heartburn. The Android market has matured considerably in two primary ways:

1. Lots more apps
2. Better quality apps, by and large.

The main improvements have been speed and stability, plus a lot more choice. At Verizon alone there are 4-5 Android phones to choose from. The navigation and voice search are the two biggest improvement in the platform. Voice search is increasingly accurate, and navigation has lost several clicks, making it much safer to use while driving. Surprisingly, the quality of the speakerphone and music playback quality through the built-in speaker seem to have improved.

There are a couple of Apps I just can’t speak highly enough of  Wi-Fi Analyzer and Voice Search. Wi-Fi Analyzer allows you to use the Droid to figure out where you are going to get the best reception from your wireless network, whether there’s interference on the channel you are using, and where any dead spots may be. Great for getting the most out of your wireless network, and knowing where a range extender might come in useful. Voice Search is just phenomenal in version 2.2 of the Android operating system. The recognition has improved tremendously, so that voice dialing becomes a real possibility, but it works just as well for browsing the web too, and can be used to enter an address into the navigation system. It’s a life saver while driving, perhaps literally. You can set the navigation or dial a call while keeping your eyes on the road where they belong. You can even pick out your favorite tune to play, if you store your music on your Droid.