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.
Andy "Krazy" Glew is a computer architect, a long time poster on comp.arch ... and an evangelist of collaboration tools such as wikis, calendars, blogs, etc. Plus an occasional commentator on politics, taxes, and policy. Particularly the politics of multi-ethnic societies such as Quebec, my birthplace. Photo credit: http://docs.google.com/View?id=dcxddbtr_23cg5thdfj
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
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.
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.