In a rather bold statement, the CEO of Verizon Communications basically said that the company simply doesn’t care about landline anymore.

The statement may be bold but I think we all knew in the back of our minds this was coming. Generally speaking, the only reason anybody has a landline phone today is either because a) it’s required in order to use DSL internet service, b) cell phone reception is not available for whatever reason or c) the internet connection is too slow to handle broadband VoIP properly.

If I asked how many of you out there use your wireless phone as your primary phone, chances are the majority of you would say, "I do!"

If I asked how many of you do have a landline, but it’s through your cable company and not the local Telco, chances are also good the majority of you would say, "I do!" (And in fact I’m one of them.)

Why do so many choose wireless and/or cable over Telco?

The first answer is cost.

For basic communications, a prepaid cell phone is cheaper than a POTS landline.

For business-grade phone service, VoIP offerings from your local cable company or broadband make it super-easy to setup. It also costs less and in many instances can have same-day setup.

The second answer is features.

On a basic POTS line you get absolutely nothing in the way of features – not even Caller ID. With the absolute cheapest prepaid cell phone you can buy you can at least see the incoming number of who is calling you. You also get 3-way calling, voicemail and texting besides that.

You will spend $25 a month (not including tax) in most places for a featureless POTS line. If you were to go with Vonage, that same $25 a month gets you unlimited calling anywhere. And I mean anywhere; it includes international calling to over 60 countries with no additional cost to you.

The third answer is value.

Who in their right mind would go with a POTS landline when you can get so much more stuff with wireless or VoIP that’s actually useful for the same price?

At this point the only thing keeping POTS around is the fact that broadband and wireless isn’t available everywhere in the US. In fact there is a study going on right now being paid for by the US government in an attempt to find out what our broadband reach is – because to be honest nobody knows the true answer to that at present.

Do you agree with the Verizon Communications CEO? Is it time to put old-style landline out to pasture?

Texas Legislature House Bill 55 gives its cities and counties the choice (keyword there) of whether or not to ban cell phone usage in designated school zones.

In order for this to be enforced, signs must be posted. In addition, to be fined (which is $200 per infraction), the cell phone must be to your ear and your vehicle must be in motion. This means hands-free devices are acceptable and/or if you’re stopped, that’s okay also.

There are few instances I can cite where a bill is written correctly the first time; this is one of them. It’s fair, and the fact Texas is giving its cities and towns the choice of whether to enforce it is even better.

Big kudos to the Lone Star State for this one. Job well done.

The typical tech people put into cars are music players, DVD decks, PNDs (personal navigation devices) and smartphones. And the most annoying thing is how to mount it.

You have seven basic options for mounting tech in a car:

1. Proprietary in-dash
2. Semi-proprietary in-dash
3. In-mirror
4. Gooseneck/Bracket
5. Suction mount to adhesive plate
6. Suction mount to glass
7. Friction mount (a.k.a. "bean bag" mount)

Here’s each one of these in detail.

Proprietary in-dash

This is any tech you buy that is specifically made for in-dash use and the most expensive of the bunch. Ordinarily you’re going to spend at least $400 (installation not included) for one of these setups. Better ones have a DVD player, GPS and options to pair to your phone via Bluetooth.

The major problem with tech of this type is that it suffers from the "last in line" curse. Any tech that is current now (such as on Blackberries and iPhones) won’t be available in the in-dash units until a year or two later. And by that time the tech is already obsolete.

Semi-proprietary in-dash

The difference between this and the fully proprietary in-dash setups is that certain pieces can be taken out and used elsewhere. The one seen above has a 4.3-inch TomTom GPS device that can be removed by a simple click-in/click-out (which means it can also be upgraded easily, avoiding some of the last-in-line curse). It also has a ton of other features. If I were searching for an in-dash solution, I would take this over the fully proprietary any day.

 In-mirror

A rear-view mirror that’s a touchscreen monitor? Believe it. The operating system is Windows CE and there are mounting brackets for Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Mitsubishi, Ford, Mazda and Chevrolet.

To note: These are not easy to acquire and are usually reserved for builders who buy 100 of them at a time. We’ll see tech like this become more readily available for consumers as time goes on, possibly in the form of a super-thin OLED screen that "sticks" to your mirror without having to swap it out.

 Gooseneck mount

Mounts of this type can either be held in place via a suction to the glass or drilled into the floor. You will either love or hate the gooseneck.

Suction mount to adhesive plate

This is the most convenient option for most people. Automotive GPS makers have got this down pat. For example, when you buy a Garmin GPS, it comes with a plate with adhesive that you can stick to the dashboard. Then you mount the GPS to it with its suction mount. Works well and is certainly better than putting it on the glass.

Suction mount to glass

Whether it’s a gooseneck or other type of mount, suction mounting to glass is an imperfect solution at best, mainly due to the fact it can "take a dive" without warning.

  Friction mount (the "bean bag")

This mount setup sits anywhere and has rubber padding under it to prevent sliding from all over the place.

Which is best for you?

For those who are cheap: Suction mount to glass. Readily available, easy install.

For those who have odd-shaped devices: Gooseneck with adjustable bracket. Ham radio guys have been doing this forever, because a mobile ICOM isn’t the same size as a Kenwood isn’t the same size as a Yaesu, etc.

BONUS TIP for hams: Consider using a gooseneck floor mount that attaches to the passenger seat bolt. No drilling necessary. Takes minutes to install. Cheap and rock-solid. Looks good, too.

For those that want the easiest to use: Use the friction mount. It can be moved from car to car easily and moved anywhere you like at whim. Bear in mind friction mounts come for a variety of different mobile devices including almost all cell phones.

For those that don’t like friction mounts: Use a suction mount to a plate. This is what I use personally because the bean bag liked to jump around when going over things like bumpy railroad tracks – even at slow speed.

For those that like to show off: Use the in-mirror (assuming you can even get one) or in-dash. But remember that this is a very permanent thing. All the rest can be moved from car to car, but not this method. Not easily, anyway. Once it’s in there, it’s really in there if you catch my meaning.

It’s an ever-increasing mobile world, and with it comes all the tech stuff we need to get things done. Being mobile means your tech will run off a battery or two. However there are certain items when you should care and other times when you don’t have to.

Point-And-Shoot Digital Cameras

Should you care? Yes.

I won’t buy a point-and-shoot digital camera unless it runs off AA batteries. It is the best and cheapest way to keep taking pictures. Yes, it does add bulk to the camera for the battery compartment, but that small inconvenience is more than worth it.

Camcorders

Should you care? Yes.

It’s always smart to purchase a secondary battery for your camcorder. If possible, buy the secondary with the camcorder at the same time.

Automotive GPS

Should you care? No.

Battery life for automotive GPS devices such as from Garmin, TomTom, Magellan or any other have always been terrible, and it doesn’t look like that will change any time soon. With the screen at full brightness (required for daytime driving use) and the speaker volume at 70% or higher, you’ll get at most 2 hours out of the battery no matter who made the GPS. Furthermore it’s always used in the car, so when the battery dies you just plug in the charger and keep on going.

Battery life on GPS matters for units other than for automotive use, such as for trail or maritime. The Garmin Oregon 550t for example runs off 2 AA batteries, and that matters a lot for a GPS of that type given its particular purpose (it does both trail and maritime).

Cell Phone

Should you care? No.

I know no one that carries around a spare cell phone battery with them. All wireless phones today have a relatively decent talk time concerning battery life. And yes, if you talk for three hours straight, of course the battery will die on you. But for shorter calls and texting, the battery should last for days so it’s not a huge consideration.

What’s more important with a wireless phone purchase is the rated talk talk time and standby time. This doesn’t necessarily depend on battery type, because two phones by two different manufacturers that use the same type of battery will have different talk/standby times.

General rule of thumb: The less features a wireless phone has, the longer the battery will last due to the fact the phone doesn’t have to "think" as much. This is why 10-dollar TracFones have unbelievably good standby times, since the phone has only the most basic of features. It’s also the reason older less-featured cell phones with a new battery in them seem to "last forever".

Laptop Computers

Should you care? Depends on type.

With laptops there are basically three flavors: The netbook, standard and the gamer.

With the netbook (9 to 12-inch screen), yes, battery options definitely count because it’s meant to be ultra-mobile. You should stuff a netbook with longest-lasting battery possible.

With the standard (13 to 15-inch screens), yes it counts. You should stuff that one with a 9-cell. Yes it will cost a pretty penny but it’s more than worth it.

With the gamer laptop (17-inch or higher with a powerful graphics card), no. Gamer laptops are well known to have inferior battery life because of the horsepower required to run them. And even if you stuff in the best battery available, you’d be lucky to get more than 2.5 hours of life before it needs a charge.

Some choose to text on a wireless phone for fiscal reasons. It used to be that texting cost more than speaking, but these days it’s the other way around (especially with prepaid wireless phones).

Some choose to text because it’s faster. If you receive a text message asking, “Meet up for coffee at noon at D.D.?”, it is quicker to reply with a “yes” than it is to call, wait for the ring and actually say yes.

And obviously there are those who like to text because for whatever reason they fear speaking on the phone. When “hiding” behind text people feel more confident for whatever reason.

The Big Question: If there was a wireless device you could buy that was text-only, had a real miniature QWERTY keypad on it (meaning not a number pad), and cost $15 a month for unlimited domestic and international texting, would you buy it?

There’s a lot of you out there that would say yes to that. Are you one of them? If so, why? Or if not, why?

Right now a lot of people are tightening belts concerning money and one way to save cash is by using a pre-paid cell phone instead of post-paid. Here are some tips to maximize minutes and minimize hassle.

1. Check voicemail from another number

On many pre-paid phones it chews up minutes checking your voicemail. Solution: Check it from another line. Call your cell phone number, wait for the greeting, press star (*), enter your voicemail password then press pound (#). You’ll be able to log right in and take all the time you want without using any minutes at all. And you can keep your phone free for use while checking voicemail.

2. Do not register the phone with the provider’s web site

Pre-paid phone companies strongly urge you to register the phone with their web site for one reason – to spam you. Don’t fall for the convenience of buying minutes online if you can. Buy your minutes with cards from local retailers instead.

And no, you don’t save any cash buying online compared to retail because you still have to pay the tax no matter what method you use, so you might as well buy the card(s) in the store.

3. Avoid using text alerts from other providers

You lose either time or "text allowance" each time you receive a text message alert. Don’t bother with these.

4. Do not "tie in" your phone with your instant messenger.

Many instant messenger services allow you to "tie in" or "link" your IM account with your cell phone. For those with unlimited messaging this may be fine, but for pre-paid, not so much. Sure, it may be convenient but it will chew up time/allowance for text messages fast.

5. Buy an identical phone just for the battery.

Your pre-paid phone was most likely inexpensive. If it was a Motorola W175g for example, the phone probably cost you only ten dollars.

Buy a second phone just for the battery. When you get it, don’t bother activating it. Just plug it in to the wall and keep it on charge for a fresh battery. When the battery in your primary phone runs out, swap out the batteries and ta-da, extra battery when you need it.

STRANGE BUT TRUE: If you were to buy a battery outright for that same 10-dollar phone, it can cost up to 30 dollars. Why bother when the entire phone is 10 and you get the same battery with an extra "charger" (the other phone)?

To those who have ever used Skype, Yahoo! Messenger voice chat, Ventrilo, TeamSpeak or any other over-the-internet method of peer-to-peer voice communication, you’ve noticed the quality of sound is far superior to land-line and wireless/cell phones.

Why is this?

There are actually a few good reasons.

First, some explanation.

Continued

When it come to any OS that’s *nix-based, there’s a lot I don’t complain about compatibility-wise due to the proprietary nature of a lot of computer hardware.

For example, if I had a Microsoft wireless keyboard that had Windows-only features on it and it just would not work under Linux, would I get upset about this? Not at all. It’s a proprietary keyboard (custom “Windows only” keys) meant for a proprietary operating system (Windows) using proprietary software (Windows drivers and control software) – and I personally feel that keyboards so unbelievably proprietary like that completely suck anyway because they’re just too “tied” to a particular OS. Continued

The question of how many literal connections a wireless router can handle is anywhere between 50 and 253 depending on manufacturer. (Quick question answered: It’s not 255 because the router has to assign itself a few IPs.)

The question of how many usable simultaneous connections is a different story altogether because that number is drastically smaller. Continued

The following assumes that your wireless networking card has been properly detected by Ubuntu and all you want to do is connect to your network at this point. I have an older Dell Inspiron 6000 and the Intel PROset wireless detects with no problem whatsoever. Other from-OEM wireless cards should also detect properly as well. If you have a USB-based wireless card, you probably will encounter problems having it detect. I strongly suggest visiting the wireless networking area of UbuntuHCL to see if your card is supported or not if this is the case. This is not a document about wireless networking card detection but rather how to use it once working.

Wireless networking is very easy to do in Ubuntu 8.04, but it may not be readily obvious where to go to set it up. In Windows XP what we’re used to doing is either using a third-party app provided by the wireless card manufacturer or having to dive into the Control Panel to get it working.

In Ubuntu you don’t have to do this. All the wireless networking setup can be performed direct from the Application bar.

By default you will see this:

Note the icon to the right of the speaker icon at the top. Your networking is there and ready to use but isn’t configured just yet, hence the small orange triangle.

If we LEFT-CLICK this icon, you see this:

Your wireless network may be listed unless you have your router name not broadcasted. Being that I don’t have my router name broadcasted, I click Connect to Other Wireless Network…

Above: Setting up the connection. You put in your network name, what type of wireless security you’re using and the password.

Note: You will get asked to enter in a "keyring" on a separate pop-up dialog. This is a password you enter in for that specific Ubuntu PC. I suggest making it different from the router password for security reasons.

Above: When connected you’ll see the network icon change to bars indicating signal strength. Your network connection is officially working at this point.

Above: Launch the Firefox web browser and it will land on start.ubuntu.com, a live internet site – proving (again) you’re connected to the internet.

If you can get to the point where your wireless card is detected, it is this easy to connect to your home wireless network.

I’ll answer that question even before I start this article: Yes, you are. And you always have been since the first time you used text messaging on a mobile wireless network.

The reason you’re getting screwed is because those who are computer savvy even to the most basic degree understand that when you charge 20 cents for 140 bytes of data or less transferred, that’s nothing short of the rip-off of the century. More on that in a moment.

According to washingtonpost.com, all the major phone carriers deem that outside of the flat-rate monthly data plans, a text message costs 20 cents each time one is transferred.

Let’s examine that for a moment.

If you take a 140-character phrase and save it as a text file on your computer, you will see that text file is 140 bytes exactly. One byte per character.

Let’s say you live on your cell phone and send 500 text messages daily (yes that’s extreme but there are some crazy fools who actually send that much), with each being a full 140 bytes each. That’s 70,000 bytes daily or 68.4 kilobytes.

If you sent that much text messaging data every day for a whole month, that’s 2 megabytes of data. That’s it. Just 2. For the month.

You’re probably thinking "I can download more than that in a web browser in less than 5 minutes." That’s right.

Now realize that most people don’t get anywhere near 2 megabytes of plain old text data transferred per month. We’re not even talking binary transfers here, just text and text alone.

You’ve probably figured out by now that 140 bytes isn’t worth 20 cents no matter how you look at it. No way, no how. It’s an outright ridiculous price.

Consider the following (this is from the linked article above):

…600 text messages contain less data than a 1 minute phone call. It said that at 20 cents a text message, wireless carriers would collect $120 for 600 messages.

"Does $120 for the equivalent of one minute of voice seem reasonable?"

I personally don’t think that’s reasonable.

Do you?

Home wireless networks are, generally speaking, pretty reliable but there are always some ‘tweaks’ you can do to squeeze more performance or stability out of it. I came across a good guide on Microsoft’s site which offers easy to do steps.

Of course, the most obvious (moving the router to a central location) is the most effective, but there are some other steps which are just as easy. If your performance is ’spotty’ you may want to consider changing the frequency your router works on as your neighbor’s routers are probably on the same frequency as yours (lets face it, few people ever change the default frequency).

Anyhow, this is good guide to review to take a look and implement the easy stuff.

This section lets you configure the wireless part of the router. This usually includes the SSID, channel, and encryption settings.

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This chapter is a video presentation.

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If everything is working well on your wireless network, it is now time to secure it. The nature of wireless is that anybody within range can access the network. But, unless you’re feeling especially charitable, you probably don’t want people to be able to sit outside your house and use your network. If those people are knowledgeable and mischievous, they can use that access to do any number of bad things.

The two major types of security are Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) and WiFi Protected Access (WPA). WEP works by requiring a password which is used to decrypt encrypted data sent across the network. The password is a key which is used to successfully decrypt the signal. The encryption key needs to be entered identically on both the access point and any computer wishing to connect to the network. This is much better than nothing, but unfortunately, hackers have found a way to bust through WEP encryption. Obviously, most people walking around your home probably have no idea how to do that, however, it can be done. So, the WiFi Organization developed WPA.

WPA combines encryption with user authentication. Instead of simply sharing an encryption key like WEP, WPA requires a client computer to log in with a password, called a shared key. If the user passes this test, the access point will then send the user a unique encryption key that is valid for a finite amount of time. All data between the access point and the client computer is decrypted using this temporary key. When the key expires, the access point and the client computer set up between themselves a new key and the process is continued.

To set up wireless network security, you should access your configuration via a web browser. It is best to do this via a computer which is connected to your network via wires. Once you enable wireless security, any wireless connected PC will be disconnected from the network until you set up the access information on those computers. A computer connected using wires is not subject to this security.

In your router settings, locate the WPA settings. If you have options to select a mode, choose “Pre-Shared Key” or PSK. Set a key, which can be any combination of letter and numbers of your choice. In most cases, the renewal period is set to 900 seconds (15 minutes) and this is adequate as is.

Once this is set up on your router, you need to go to each computer and enter the WPA shared key. Whenever you try to connect to the LAN, you will be prompted to enter the shared key.

If you don’t wish to use WPA security, you can use WEP security. As said, it is not as secure as WPA, but it is far better than nothing at all. To configure this, access the WEP settings on your router. Select to Enable WEP security. If the router offers different encryption levels, choose the highest level. Next, you need to choose an encryption key. Most routers allow you to use either hexadecimal or ASCII keys. ASCII means regular letters and numbers, so unless you’re feeling especially dorky, I would use ASCII. Enter your key. You need to enter at least one key, although many routers offer the option to enter several keys. This allows you to easily switch between keys later on.

Last, go to your computers and enter the encryption key for your network. You will need to enter it twice and then click Connect. It will remember the key so you should not need to enter it again unless you change the key.