Disclaimer

The content of this blog is my personal opinion only. Although I am an employee - currently of Nvidia, in the past of other companies such as Iagination Technologies, MIPS, Intellectual Ventures, Intel, AMD, Motorola, and Gould - I reveal this only so that the reader may account for any possible bias I may have towards my employer's products. The statements I make here in no way represent my employer's position, nor am I authorized to speak on behalf of my employer. In fact, this posting may not even represent my personal opinion, since occasionally I play devil's advocate.

See http://docs.google.com/View?id=dcxddbtr_23cg5thdfj for photo credits.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

More Toshiba TabletPC woes

Monday, sitting at my desk, programing with Rajeev, I powered on my Toshiba. Hallelujah!!! The beeping problem occurred - Rajeev is my witness. Now I have two witnesses, my wife and Rajeev.

I even managed to video the password dialog box behavior: as if a key were stuck. Select all, empty, and it keeps being pressed. (Unfortunately, I just disabled the phone that has the video recorded - now I'm not sure how to transfer the video. Ah, maybe I can switch SIM cards.)

The beeping was at a low frequency - say 2 per second. When I opened windows, such as the password dialog box, the frequency increased - say 4 per second. (These estimates are approximate and relative, not accurate and absolute.)

After beeping for 5 minutes or so - during which I video'ed the effect, and clicked around - eventually it stopped all on its own.

Prior to this episode, the TabletPC had been connected to power but idle and/or in standby for perhaps 4 hours. This is frequently the case: I rarely have the problem when I boot fresh or power on. (Rarely - but I have had it in these circumstances.)

Possible new observation: the problems always start recurring after plugging in to my Toshiba doc. However, once started, they persist, intermittently, even though using my non-dock power supply.

So far NWCS Toshiba support has replaced my keyboard, fan, and motherboard. What's left? Power supply - the frequency shifting according to activity level of PC suggests this could be a problem.

Open Letter to AT&T about Pay-per-Use Charges

I recently purchased an AT&T Tilt, and am happy on this first day. I have requested a voice plan, but no data plan.

I am told that I should ensure that AT&T *not* provision the data plan, to prevent expensive pay per use fees. Apparently certain WM6 applications connect to the data wireless network by default. I have disabled such defaults as much as I know how to do, but I still wish to give AT&T this directive: I do NOT wish to use data, even as pay per use.

I *do* wish to use voice, according to my plan.

I *do* wish to use SMS text messaging.

But I do *not* want to use any data facility - no web browsing, no email access - using AT&T's data wireless network.

AT&T customer support assures me that there is no such pay-per-use data access; but other users tell me there is. I wish to make my desires 100% clear. I will protest such charges if they occur.

I am communicating this to AT&T every way I can imagine:
a) through AT&T's web page based "email"
b) by phone to AT&T customer representatives
c) by paper mail

I am blogging this at http://andyglew.blogspot.com/2008/03/open-letter-to-at-and-pay-per-use.html for reference.

I am also preserving this email on my blog because AT&T's &^&^#!!@!!@@ web based email can only accept 1000 characters. I editted out words to make it fit on AT&T's site, but am providing the full reference here. I suppose this is my new BKM for customer service sites that do not give you enough room to write a full question: fill in their webform, and provide a link to a website where they can see more details. I would not put detals such as account numbers on blogger; I wonder if a sufficiently secure mechanism could be created.