So I just spent the last hour and a half of my life trying to cancel my dish network service after not evening having it for 72 hours. Guess what, they want me to pay a $400+ cancellation fee after failing to install the service correctly. How? I don't know they can do it, but they think they can. After making 3 calls to Dish Network they finally got me to someone who was NOT reading from a script and cared, but she was not given any power to make an executive decision even though she was from the "Executive Resolution Team". She was very helpful and I hope that the service does work, but I don't think it's going to fix the issue overall. Well see what happens when the new receiver shows up!
Oh, I'll be posting more about this.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Stupid laws!
Retarded rules of the world: this is a new one on me. so I had a nice small wrap for dinner walked the town of nashville and walked back to my hotel. I stopped by starbux and picked up a frapachino. I walked into the hotel and wanted to sit in the lobby/bar area to enjoy a book and my drink. I was told by the bar tender that I had to leave because they would loose their liquor license if outside drinks are brought in. WTF?!?!? You have to be kidding me!
Monday, July 12, 2010
We think we have it tough!
So I hear a lot of people saying they have it tough theses days. Heck even I jump on that band wagon here and there. I just had a 45 minute phone call with a my best friend telling him how horrible life was. This morning I was in the drive-thru getting my normal, #8 with a large decafe with 5 creme and 5 sugar. This lady walks up to me and trys to start a conversation with me through my passenger side window, I roll the window down and she says, "Can I start your day off with a complement?" I say sure, "You look very nice today" She then proceeds to tell me that she is not an addict but she it just "at it". She asks me if I would date her, I tell her no, sorry I'm married already. She then asks if I have kids and I tell he Yes, I have two, two dogs that is those are my kids. She stopped and I thought she was going to tear up. She then proceeded to tell me that she is not a bad person but she had to sell her cat. She was adamant that I knew she was not a bad person. I told her Shady your not a bad person. Sometimes people have to make hard decisions and Tiger (her cat) is probably in a better place and someone is taking care of him. She finally asked me for money which I knew is where she was going. She asked for a dollar and all I had was $6, she got one so now I'm down to $5, I'm thinking crap, how am I going to pay for my order? She shakes my hand and we talk all the way up to the first window. Finally she walked away as I progressed up to the second window.
As I pulled back onto the street I started to tear up thinking, my god, how bad do I really have it? Here Shady is homeless, has no money, she had to sell her pet and has to beg for money to make it from day to day. I am sure some of your are thinking, she's just a vagrant do not give her anything, it will just reenforce the fact that she can beg for money. Well as that might be, she is still a human being and I hope that my just simply rolling down my window and taking the time to acknowledge her might help her in some weird crazy way. It also made me really think very hard about if I really have it that rough? Yes I have problems, I don't know how I'm going to pay bills from time to time, I fight with my partner about stupid stuff (and it is stupid stuff!), but really I don't have it that bad. I have a family that cares about me, two dogs that adore me and friends that love me. I don't have it that bad, I just really don't.
So for everyone else out there if you are reading this, you probably do not have it that bad as Shady does. You have skills, heck you know how to use a computer, you just need to refocus on what you need to do and be really hold yourself accountable to reaching that goal. Ask your friends to hold you accountable ask family heck ask your boss at work. I think sometimes we are blind to the resources we have from time to time.
That's my few words for the day.
-Ted
As I pulled back onto the street I started to tear up thinking, my god, how bad do I really have it? Here Shady is homeless, has no money, she had to sell her pet and has to beg for money to make it from day to day. I am sure some of your are thinking, she's just a vagrant do not give her anything, it will just reenforce the fact that she can beg for money. Well as that might be, she is still a human being and I hope that my just simply rolling down my window and taking the time to acknowledge her might help her in some weird crazy way. It also made me really think very hard about if I really have it that rough? Yes I have problems, I don't know how I'm going to pay bills from time to time, I fight with my partner about stupid stuff (and it is stupid stuff!), but really I don't have it that bad. I have a family that cares about me, two dogs that adore me and friends that love me. I don't have it that bad, I just really don't.
So for everyone else out there if you are reading this, you probably do not have it that bad as Shady does. You have skills, heck you know how to use a computer, you just need to refocus on what you need to do and be really hold yourself accountable to reaching that goal. Ask your friends to hold you accountable ask family heck ask your boss at work. I think sometimes we are blind to the resources we have from time to time.
That's my few words for the day.
-Ted
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
The True Power of The IT Nation!
Six months ago I would have said I would never work with a partner in the same industry as I am which many of you know is Managed Services. Then I ran into this crazy (in a good way), insane (in even a better way), unorthodox (they broke the mold), company CharTec. So, I find myself sitting at a CharTec academy down South, I think this was their second academy. I’m listening to this guy you may have heard of him Alex Rogers? It’s not important now. Anyways he looks like he is on Red Bull, Monster and EVERY energy drink known to every IT professional, as my friend Jim calls it “The Elixir of Life” (he loves Pepsi). So I’m listening to this guy and honestly a lot of it makes sense, but... in my head I am super skeptical and thinking It’s to good to be true! No one in their right mind is going to give every single competitor in the world all this training, advice, access to his staff, one-on-one training anytime I need it? There has to be a catch.... There has to be.. or this guy is just full of BS and just a good sales person.
So I meet a few new people at the training event, CharTec has their engineers at the event, Yes, these are the guys you talk to on the phone, not paid actors I found out! Everyone is huddled around the UTM solution which is powered by Untangled, we have John logging into his house from the event none the less showing us how he has his VPN acess setup, becase the demo box has no real true Internet connection. So, I’m intrigued... Why you ask? Because I developed the same damn box and now I have 20 of them that I PERSONALLY have to manage, I like their solution because it’s uniform and ANYONE including my dog could manage it, it’s that simple! Again, I’m still skeptical.
Next I head up to room B I think it was for the dreaded sales training. Yes, they put you through sales training. I can’t remember who I was partnered with but in the scenario I think I was in Tipa in a taxi trying to hold a conversation about the price of tea or something crazy! (at least I was not the two guys who had to talk about hair products! LOL) Frank was demonstrating how to ping-pong questions back and forth, answer a question with a question. I had never been in a training environment like this before. Then I heard one of the other partners talk about how he just had a sales deal that he was preparing for and how he was able to call Frank while he was on the way to the appointment to review some key points and roll play before he got there. I’m thinking, humm.. he’s a plant, he’s a CharTec employee just in plain clothes. Then there was Xaviar, NEVER done sales before in his life... Man this guy could sell if he had too and he just blew me away.... I just saw him last night at a training event and I always think back to the academy. Wonder if they have him on film? Again, this is cool, but I still think as soon as I leave here they will not offer any of this stuff they say they do. It just makes no sense, why do they offer all this? It’s too good to be true.
It’s now the final day, we are wrapping things up and I get to talking to this guy and find out he lives in Florida. I think hey I have clients in Florida, I wonder what part of Florida does he live in? can he help me? Is he competition? Is he a spy? LOL just kidding I didn’t think that, but I was thinking I might be able to leverage his company if I need help. Guess what..... I forgot to get his business card! By now I’m getting a bit more excited about CharTec, but I still think it’s all smoke an mirrors. I keep thinking why would CharTec give me all this? Why, WHY, WHY!?!?! What’s the catch?
I take all this information back to the office and I start learning about the solutions CharTec has to offer. Some good, some okay, Some not for us WE CAN DO IT BETTER! (Ya, okay... I’m past that now!) We end up doing 14 deals in the first four months. Computers, Phone Systems, UPS’s, Switches, Firewalls you name it we have either sold it outright or HaaS’d it. Can you imagine ordering equipment from professionals who know what you are taking about? Get that from HP or Dell! Oh, don’t even get me started. Can you imagine talking to a team of people that really know their stuff and really care when you have a problem? How about people who have follow through and make sure the issue is resolved!? (Thanks ConnectWise, LOL) Well CharTec is all that and a bag of fries, and a quarter-pounder and a shake and a apple pie!
So, I’m at a Robin Robins event a few months back. I see CharTec and of course I go say Hi to Brian, Frank and the entire team. So I’m talking another lady who is talking with Brian and she is a CharTec partner. She’s drank the coolaid too and she believes in CharTec and get’s it. You have to get it or CharTec is not for you and it’s NOT for everyone! So I get introduced to Deana Pizzo from IT Solutions of South Florida. South Florida I think... nah.... I tell her my story about this guy I met in California at the academy and how I didn’t get his information. Guess what.... Yup... Jason Pizzo is his name... Her husband! What are the chances? So we continue to talk and we get on the topic of ConnectWise. She tells me OH OH OH have you tried the new ConnectWise Shared Templates? Ya, we have played with them. She says, we found this great SBS 2008 Migration swing project that we are reviewing right now. I say, “Really? How many hours is it?” She says, oh about 32 hours or so the guys back at the office know. I extend my hand and say, “Hi, my name is Ted Freitas, I posted that project to the ConnectWise Shared Templates Site.” WOW... Small world!
So back to the entire reason for this post that I started 30 minutes ago. Just the other day we had a failed SATA drive on one of our CharTec servers. Yes, guys they do fail and if you think they don’t your retarted! GET OUT NOW! Guess who it was? Our South Florida customer. Guess who I called? Yes, Jason. Guess what my customer said when I had to dispatch another company (I’ve had to do this before so he expected it) and I quote “I thought you’d like to know that Jason is a pro and you should feel very comfortable using him as needed”. That’s powerful! Here is the key the only way this was possible and I’m dead serious is because of CharTec. I truly believe that CharTec needs to or really already has started to set standards in the MSP industry. If we all work together as an IT Nation as Arnie Bellini says think of the POWER that us small companies can have over the competition! Dell, HP, Lenovo, cannot touch us! Hell they can’t even complete a service call in just one appointment! Our last one was 3 service calls and I think thank god that I didn’t have to send my tech out there! Even though it’s a Dell or HP issue though three calls, what does the client think? It becomes our problem and reflects on us! They are so bloated it makes me sick, further I can’t believe that people still want to buy from them! Will I ever cut them out of my business no, becuase I just have to accept they are there. But guess what? Within 12 months I can typically get them repalced with CharTec Intel equipment! HAHAHA
Oh and all the things that Alex Rogers promised in the presentation, it’s all true. I do have the keys to his castle! I just got back from two training classes with his engineers on their CharTec VMS solution. I sent my staff down to his office for the training, I talked with Alex and Jamie about a sales question / problem I have. I talked to Shane for a good hour or more I think about DISC and the wealth of information and their wiliness to share is something like I have never seen before! Me and my ENTIRE staff are grateful to Alex and Monique’s team!
My names Ted Freitas and I approve this message, I was not asked by CharTech, Alex, Monique, Jamie, Shane, Xavier, Deana, Jason ConnectWise and especially not Dell or HP to write this!
Ted G. Freitas
ted.freitas@cpnllc.com
Central Point Networks, LLC.
www.cpnllc.com
559.274.9700 / 877.463.8727
So I meet a few new people at the training event, CharTec has their engineers at the event, Yes, these are the guys you talk to on the phone, not paid actors I found out! Everyone is huddled around the UTM solution which is powered by Untangled, we have John logging into his house from the event none the less showing us how he has his VPN acess setup, becase the demo box has no real true Internet connection. So, I’m intrigued... Why you ask? Because I developed the same damn box and now I have 20 of them that I PERSONALLY have to manage, I like their solution because it’s uniform and ANYONE including my dog could manage it, it’s that simple! Again, I’m still skeptical.
Next I head up to room B I think it was for the dreaded sales training. Yes, they put you through sales training. I can’t remember who I was partnered with but in the scenario I think I was in Tipa in a taxi trying to hold a conversation about the price of tea or something crazy! (at least I was not the two guys who had to talk about hair products! LOL) Frank was demonstrating how to ping-pong questions back and forth, answer a question with a question. I had never been in a training environment like this before. Then I heard one of the other partners talk about how he just had a sales deal that he was preparing for and how he was able to call Frank while he was on the way to the appointment to review some key points and roll play before he got there. I’m thinking, humm.. he’s a plant, he’s a CharTec employee just in plain clothes. Then there was Xaviar, NEVER done sales before in his life... Man this guy could sell if he had too and he just blew me away.... I just saw him last night at a training event and I always think back to the academy. Wonder if they have him on film? Again, this is cool, but I still think as soon as I leave here they will not offer any of this stuff they say they do. It just makes no sense, why do they offer all this? It’s too good to be true.
It’s now the final day, we are wrapping things up and I get to talking to this guy and find out he lives in Florida. I think hey I have clients in Florida, I wonder what part of Florida does he live in? can he help me? Is he competition? Is he a spy? LOL just kidding I didn’t think that, but I was thinking I might be able to leverage his company if I need help. Guess what..... I forgot to get his business card! By now I’m getting a bit more excited about CharTec, but I still think it’s all smoke an mirrors. I keep thinking why would CharTec give me all this? Why, WHY, WHY!?!?! What’s the catch?
I take all this information back to the office and I start learning about the solutions CharTec has to offer. Some good, some okay, Some not for us WE CAN DO IT BETTER! (Ya, okay... I’m past that now!) We end up doing 14 deals in the first four months. Computers, Phone Systems, UPS’s, Switches, Firewalls you name it we have either sold it outright or HaaS’d it. Can you imagine ordering equipment from professionals who know what you are taking about? Get that from HP or Dell! Oh, don’t even get me started. Can you imagine talking to a team of people that really know their stuff and really care when you have a problem? How about people who have follow through and make sure the issue is resolved!? (Thanks ConnectWise, LOL) Well CharTec is all that and a bag of fries, and a quarter-pounder and a shake and a apple pie!
So, I’m at a Robin Robins event a few months back. I see CharTec and of course I go say Hi to Brian, Frank and the entire team. So I’m talking another lady who is talking with Brian and she is a CharTec partner. She’s drank the coolaid too and she believes in CharTec and get’s it. You have to get it or CharTec is not for you and it’s NOT for everyone! So I get introduced to Deana Pizzo from IT Solutions of South Florida. South Florida I think... nah.... I tell her my story about this guy I met in California at the academy and how I didn’t get his information. Guess what.... Yup... Jason Pizzo is his name... Her husband! What are the chances? So we continue to talk and we get on the topic of ConnectWise. She tells me OH OH OH have you tried the new ConnectWise Shared Templates? Ya, we have played with them. She says, we found this great SBS 2008 Migration swing project that we are reviewing right now. I say, “Really? How many hours is it?” She says, oh about 32 hours or so the guys back at the office know. I extend my hand and say, “Hi, my name is Ted Freitas, I posted that project to the ConnectWise Shared Templates Site.” WOW... Small world!
So back to the entire reason for this post that I started 30 minutes ago. Just the other day we had a failed SATA drive on one of our CharTec servers. Yes, guys they do fail and if you think they don’t your retarted! GET OUT NOW! Guess who it was? Our South Florida customer. Guess who I called? Yes, Jason. Guess what my customer said when I had to dispatch another company (I’ve had to do this before so he expected it) and I quote “I thought you’d like to know that Jason is a pro and you should feel very comfortable using him as needed”. That’s powerful! Here is the key the only way this was possible and I’m dead serious is because of CharTec. I truly believe that CharTec needs to or really already has started to set standards in the MSP industry. If we all work together as an IT Nation as Arnie Bellini says think of the POWER that us small companies can have over the competition! Dell, HP, Lenovo, cannot touch us! Hell they can’t even complete a service call in just one appointment! Our last one was 3 service calls and I think thank god that I didn’t have to send my tech out there! Even though it’s a Dell or HP issue though three calls, what does the client think? It becomes our problem and reflects on us! They are so bloated it makes me sick, further I can’t believe that people still want to buy from them! Will I ever cut them out of my business no, becuase I just have to accept they are there. But guess what? Within 12 months I can typically get them repalced with CharTec Intel equipment! HAHAHA
Oh and all the things that Alex Rogers promised in the presentation, it’s all true. I do have the keys to his castle! I just got back from two training classes with his engineers on their CharTec VMS solution. I sent my staff down to his office for the training, I talked with Alex and Jamie about a sales question / problem I have. I talked to Shane for a good hour or more I think about DISC and the wealth of information and their wiliness to share is something like I have never seen before! Me and my ENTIRE staff are grateful to Alex and Monique’s team!
My names Ted Freitas and I approve this message, I was not asked by CharTech, Alex, Monique, Jamie, Shane, Xavier, Deana, Jason ConnectWise and especially not Dell or HP to write this!
Ted G. Freitas
ted.freitas@cpnllc.com
Central Point Networks, LLC.
www.cpnllc.com
559.274.9700 / 877.463.8727
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
DMV wait
Never loose ur license!! Avg wait times in the valley is 2:30 minutes sheez!!!!
-- Post From My iPhone
-- Post From My iPhone
Location:Northwest Ave,Fresno,United States
Sunday, April 4, 2010
My iPad review
So I've had the iPad for less than 24 hours (more like 18 hours, 8 Minutes, 30 seconds). Keep in mind that this is the 1st generation iPad and it's not going to have every single feature that we thought it would come with. I'm sure there will be a 2nd generation out in hopefully a year from now and yes, I will probably buy that one too. If you know me, you know that I tend to buy just about every product Apple sells.
So why did I buy the iPad? Well two main reasons really, first I needed a bigger display to work from than my iPhone. For what the iPhone provides it's awesome, but sometimes its just too small to get work done while traveling or while trying to wrap up a service call. Ya, I could lug my laptop around, but it's heavy and some of the software that I need to run has to be ran in a virtual machine or on a terminal server. Plus since there is an application for most of the work I do on my iPhone I assumed that the iPad would be the next logical device to own. (oh, there are will be a few surprises in this article) The second major reason was for ConnectWise, since they have an iPhone application I "assumed" that I would be able to run the ConnectWise application on my iPad. I even asked my sales rep in a brief conversation when we reactivated our mobile licenses if the program would work on the iPad and she said that she had heard that it would run on the iPad when it came out. Now, I want to make it clear that I am not holding her or ConnectWise to that comment and ConnectWise did not say it would work on the iPad, more about that later. Oh and there was a third reason too, I had to have it!
So I received the box around 2:20p from UPS. The UPS driver asked, "What's so important about these devices?" I told him that it's the much anticipated release of Apple's iPad that can sort of be summed up as a cross between an iPhone and a laptop device. The driver said, "Well they must be pretty important, because they have GPS on us and they are tracking our every move!" It's interesting to hear that, now I'm sure they always have GPS on their trucks, but UPS must of had some type "special" GPS tracking for these deliveries if the drivers are feeling "tracked". I wonder if any drivers got held up for their iPad shipments??
The good, bad & the ugly
As always the boxing for Apple's products is very sleek and well thought out. I was surprised of a few things. 1. There was no cloth provided to wipe the display off and keep it clean. After a few ours of using the device there are a LOT of finger smudges on the device. 2. There were no headphones for the device, now I would not use them (they don't fit my ears), but for paying $499 at a minimum for a device you can throw them in Apple! So after the device was fully unboxed I connected it to iTunes, I must have something wrong with my iTunes because it beach balled for about 5 minutes before it synchronized to my iPad. All of the purchased apps I had in iTunes were installed onto the iPad. I was so inpatient that after the applications were on synched I canceled the synch and dove in.
General web surfing on the device is snappy and looks great! That is unless you stumble upon a site that has flash. :( I pulled up my company website www.cpnllc.com and everything looks great. I can't wait until we get our new site goes live in a few weeks. The template we have selected as a jumping off point supports iPhone devices and will be interesting to see how we can adapt that for the iPad.
e-Mail works very similar to how the iPhone works. I like to use the mail app in landscape vs vertical mode as hides the pop-up of folders that hover over the message while I'm trying to read them and I can quickly see all messages in a list on the left. Since I synchronized my iPad with my Exchange server all my contacts were there!
Where are the Photos??? I searched and searched for the photos and finally when I wanted to get into the photos I would go to spotlight and type in Photos. I finally figured out it was in the dock, boy did I feel like a dork. I have to say though, I gave the device to two other people and they both asked the same thing, "How do I get to photos?" Is it so engrained in our heads to only look in the dock for the Phone, e-Mail, Safari & the iPod applications? Now we can put 6 items down there, what are your top 6? Mine are iSip, e-Mail, Photos, TweetDeck, ConnectWise & Safari, for now that is.
Applications Applications and more Applications
For the most part all applications appear to work pretty good. I wanted to review a couple of my favorites. Feel free to recommend new ones to me, there are so many it's hard to keep up with all of them.
e-Mail / Exchange Support - Setup was just like on the iPhone, put in the the username, password, domain, remote server and viola you have e-mail. Have not tired accepting appointments or any advanced functions but I will try to review them in the up coming days.
iSip - So no phone on the iPad? HA, if you are running a SIP based VoIP solution in your business or home, just throw a copy of iSip on your iPad and you have a phone. Since there is a built in speaker and microphone, just dial and have a FREE conversation. This is not a iPad native application so hopefully they will update this in the upcoming weeks. Note: We sell a business VoIP solution TotalVOICE to our business clients, but we are working on consumer based product that should be out in the next 6 months.
ConnectWise Client - So this is the "surprise" application I talked about earlier in the article. We use ConnectWise (CW) all day long in our business. CW keeps track of EVERYTHING, as Arnie Bellini says, "If it's not in ConnectWise, it never happened!" we live by that in our business. So I fire up the CW app (it's really a webpage that works similar to how google voice works on the iPhone) and everything is going just fine and then BAM I get a square with ? mark... is it flash? NO the iPhone does not even support flash. So I dig around and turn on debugging in Safari and there it is.... JavaScript Error: Undefined "Attempt to create a database on a platform that does not support offline capability" how do you fix it? e-mail Help at ConnectWise dot com and get back a service request. I've been escalated to Tier II so we will see what happens come Monday morning.
EchoLink - I'm always trying to keep in touch with my local amateur friends. I fired up the EchoLink client and logged into the WA6BAI-R repeater, yelped out CQCQCQ but no answer. Does it really work? Well the ECHOTEST servers says it does, I'll just have to try a few other nodes later on. This is not a iPad native app either.
iBCNU APRS Client - Keeping with the hamradio theme I fired up iBCNU the only APRS native iPhone app that I know of. Fired it up, put in my callsign and viola, I'm on APRS from my iPad. While this is not an iPad native app it does seem to function okay. Did you get my APRS message Jim?
iTap RDP - Frequently I will be on-site, traveling or just sitting at home and I will get a service request for a server that is having an issue and I have to login via RDP to do some work. iTap RDP was just updated to support the iPad and let me tell you it's NICE! I even tricked my friend Jim and told him, hey, I love my iPad so much I've already hacked it look. I had launched iTap RDP and was sitting at our terminal server desktop. Said, look, I hacked it and put windows on it, as I launch Outlook 2010 and you could not even tell it was really loading on a remote server. He was blown away and so was I. Okay, Steve, don't yell at me!
TweetDeck - TweetDeck is a great program and looks so great on the iPad. I have to admit I am a newbie to TweetDeck, but I have to say I'm loving it. Since we are doing more in the social arena I'm looking for tools that make my job easier and TweetDeck & HootSuite are where I'm starting. Thanks Chris for all your help with the social side of things.
There are too many applications to review and I'm not going to review all of them, but I will try and post a few reviews here and there as time permits. Overall all of the applications that I use on a regular basis work on the iPad except for the ConnectWise site. I'm sure they will get that fixed in the next few weeks and I'm sure there will be new features that come out as well. I have downloaded some of iPad native applications and they are nothing but stunning and I will keep you apprised of my findings.
Wrapping things up
Overall I cannot keep my hands off the iPad, well that's not true I'm on my MacBook Pro right now typing up this post. I was going to try the iPad for the post, but there is just no way that I would have been able to complete the post. It's going to take some training to get used to typing in the air. The battery seems to be holding up, I used the device right now of the box, it was fully charged (started around 2:20p) and when I called it quits at 12a the device was only down to 44%. Amazing it's back at 100% this morning! LOL
If you have any questions feel free to drop me an e-mail ted.freitas at gmail dot com and I'll be more than happy to give you a hand.
So why did I buy the iPad? Well two main reasons really, first I needed a bigger display to work from than my iPhone. For what the iPhone provides it's awesome, but sometimes its just too small to get work done while traveling or while trying to wrap up a service call. Ya, I could lug my laptop around, but it's heavy and some of the software that I need to run has to be ran in a virtual machine or on a terminal server. Plus since there is an application for most of the work I do on my iPhone I assumed that the iPad would be the next logical device to own. (oh, there are will be a few surprises in this article) The second major reason was for ConnectWise, since they have an iPhone application I "assumed" that I would be able to run the ConnectWise application on my iPad. I even asked my sales rep in a brief conversation when we reactivated our mobile licenses if the program would work on the iPad and she said that she had heard that it would run on the iPad when it came out. Now, I want to make it clear that I am not holding her or ConnectWise to that comment and ConnectWise did not say it would work on the iPad, more about that later. Oh and there was a third reason too, I had to have it!
So I received the box around 2:20p from UPS. The UPS driver asked, "What's so important about these devices?" I told him that it's the much anticipated release of Apple's iPad that can sort of be summed up as a cross between an iPhone and a laptop device. The driver said, "Well they must be pretty important, because they have GPS on us and they are tracking our every move!" It's interesting to hear that, now I'm sure they always have GPS on their trucks, but UPS must of had some type "special" GPS tracking for these deliveries if the drivers are feeling "tracked". I wonder if any drivers got held up for their iPad shipments??
The good, bad & the ugly
As always the boxing for Apple's products is very sleek and well thought out. I was surprised of a few things. 1. There was no cloth provided to wipe the display off and keep it clean. After a few ours of using the device there are a LOT of finger smudges on the device. 2. There were no headphones for the device, now I would not use them (they don't fit my ears), but for paying $499 at a minimum for a device you can throw them in Apple! So after the device was fully unboxed I connected it to iTunes, I must have something wrong with my iTunes because it beach balled for about 5 minutes before it synchronized to my iPad. All of the purchased apps I had in iTunes were installed onto the iPad. I was so inpatient that after the applications were on synched I canceled the synch and dove in.
General web surfing on the device is snappy and looks great! That is unless you stumble upon a site that has flash. :( I pulled up my company website www.cpnllc.com and everything looks great. I can't wait until we get our new site goes live in a few weeks. The template we have selected as a jumping off point supports iPhone devices and will be interesting to see how we can adapt that for the iPad.
e-Mail works very similar to how the iPhone works. I like to use the mail app in landscape vs vertical mode as hides the pop-up of folders that hover over the message while I'm trying to read them and I can quickly see all messages in a list on the left. Since I synchronized my iPad with my Exchange server all my contacts were there!
Where are the Photos??? I searched and searched for the photos and finally when I wanted to get into the photos I would go to spotlight and type in Photos. I finally figured out it was in the dock, boy did I feel like a dork. I have to say though, I gave the device to two other people and they both asked the same thing, "How do I get to photos?" Is it so engrained in our heads to only look in the dock for the Phone, e-Mail, Safari & the iPod applications? Now we can put 6 items down there, what are your top 6? Mine are iSip, e-Mail, Photos, TweetDeck, ConnectWise & Safari, for now that is.
Applications Applications and more Applications
For the most part all applications appear to work pretty good. I wanted to review a couple of my favorites. Feel free to recommend new ones to me, there are so many it's hard to keep up with all of them.
e-Mail / Exchange Support - Setup was just like on the iPhone, put in the the username, password, domain, remote server and viola you have e-mail. Have not tired accepting appointments or any advanced functions but I will try to review them in the up coming days.
iSip - So no phone on the iPad? HA, if you are running a SIP based VoIP solution in your business or home, just throw a copy of iSip on your iPad and you have a phone. Since there is a built in speaker and microphone, just dial and have a FREE conversation. This is not a iPad native application so hopefully they will update this in the upcoming weeks. Note: We sell a business VoIP solution TotalVOICE to our business clients, but we are working on consumer based product that should be out in the next 6 months.
ConnectWise Client - So this is the "surprise" application I talked about earlier in the article. We use ConnectWise (CW) all day long in our business. CW keeps track of EVERYTHING, as Arnie Bellini says, "If it's not in ConnectWise, it never happened!" we live by that in our business. So I fire up the CW app (it's really a webpage that works similar to how google voice works on the iPhone) and everything is going just fine and then BAM I get a square with ? mark... is it flash? NO the iPhone does not even support flash. So I dig around and turn on debugging in Safari and there it is.... JavaScript Error: Undefined "Attempt to create a database on a platform that does not support offline capability" how do you fix it? e-mail Help at ConnectWise dot com and get back a service request. I've been escalated to Tier II so we will see what happens come Monday morning.
EchoLink - I'm always trying to keep in touch with my local amateur friends. I fired up the EchoLink client and logged into the WA6BAI-R repeater, yelped out CQCQCQ but no answer. Does it really work? Well the ECHOTEST servers says it does, I'll just have to try a few other nodes later on. This is not a iPad native app either.
iBCNU APRS Client - Keeping with the hamradio theme I fired up iBCNU the only APRS native iPhone app that I know of. Fired it up, put in my callsign and viola, I'm on APRS from my iPad. While this is not an iPad native app it does seem to function okay. Did you get my APRS message Jim?
iTap RDP - Frequently I will be on-site, traveling or just sitting at home and I will get a service request for a server that is having an issue and I have to login via RDP to do some work. iTap RDP was just updated to support the iPad and let me tell you it's NICE! I even tricked my friend Jim and told him, hey, I love my iPad so much I've already hacked it look. I had launched iTap RDP and was sitting at our terminal server desktop. Said, look, I hacked it and put windows on it, as I launch Outlook 2010 and you could not even tell it was really loading on a remote server. He was blown away and so was I. Okay, Steve, don't yell at me!
TweetDeck - TweetDeck is a great program and looks so great on the iPad. I have to admit I am a newbie to TweetDeck, but I have to say I'm loving it. Since we are doing more in the social arena I'm looking for tools that make my job easier and TweetDeck & HootSuite are where I'm starting. Thanks Chris for all your help with the social side of things.
There are too many applications to review and I'm not going to review all of them, but I will try and post a few reviews here and there as time permits. Overall all of the applications that I use on a regular basis work on the iPad except for the ConnectWise site. I'm sure they will get that fixed in the next few weeks and I'm sure there will be new features that come out as well. I have downloaded some of iPad native applications and they are nothing but stunning and I will keep you apprised of my findings.
Wrapping things up
Overall I cannot keep my hands off the iPad, well that's not true I'm on my MacBook Pro right now typing up this post. I was going to try the iPad for the post, but there is just no way that I would have been able to complete the post. It's going to take some training to get used to typing in the air. The battery seems to be holding up, I used the device right now of the box, it was fully charged (started around 2:20p) and when I called it quits at 12a the device was only down to 44%. Amazing it's back at 100% this morning! LOL
If you have any questions feel free to drop me an e-mail ted.freitas at gmail dot com and I'll be more than happy to give you a hand.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Microsoft Store - Please...
Been a long time since I have blogged here, but figured that since I wanted to rant about Microsoft's new Store that this might be the place to do it. I have to say I am really not that impressed. What happened to doing something original. When I look at Windows 7 I see allot of Apple in the product, when I look at the new Microsoft store I see Apple in their store. When is Microsoft going to do something original? Wait, maybe they are not able to be original! I don't even know what they could offer in the store, it's not like Microsoft sells direct, they push 90% of their product through OEM's or big box shops, does this mean that MS is going to start selling computer hardware?
I guess I am just frustrated with Microsoft and this latest push to copy the Apple Stores just makes me sick.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)