What is the deal with services on cell phones? Everything seems to cost $2.99 a month. Everything. Contrast that with everything being free on the Internet. These two worlds stand in stark contrast to me. There has to be balance somewhere, but to be perfectly honest, I feel nickel and dimed to death by cell carriers. Every time that phone manufacturer’s come up with a new feature, I get charged for it.

“Hey Murray, your phone is now an MP3 player!”
“Far Out…having one device that both calls people and plays music… sounds perfect.”
“Great, well in order to load music on your phone, you must either buy it from us for $2.99 per song, or you can load your MP3s using this $29.95 dollar program.”

“Hey Murray, you can send text messages to your friends!”
“Groovy, I like friends… and talking to them.”
“Great, each time your phone beeps with a new message, you owe us $0.10 and the person who receives that message also owes us $0.10…Now you can avoid this if you agree to pay us in advance for text messages that you may or may not use.”

“Hey Murray, you can access the Internet from your phone!”
“SNAP, I needs some of that. I like the Internet. It is fun and useful in everyday life.”
“Great, since you have a snazzy new smart phone, you are going to have to upgrade to a full internet plan. It is more expensive, but in return, you can’t send text messages. You are a valued customer who is dropping serious bank to use your phone, and you have been loyal to us for years and years, but under no circumstance would we give you ANYTHING. ”

I like my phone and for the most part I like Cingular. I get service everywhere I go. But, I am so tired of being nickel and dimed to death. Throw in something for free. Why should I pay $2.99 for every little new feature. Have I not earned a free gift or two.

Or, roll out some faster internet now….NOW. Either give me good return on the money that I plunk down month after month, or stop charging me for absolutely everything. (Texting should be one low cost for unlimited usage.)
(Texting should be thrown in with the unlimited internet…How much blood do you need?)

This post is no longer current. Check out this newer post on using a Samsung Blackjack as a modem.
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In the ongoing saga story of my new phone, I just used it to connect to the Internet. It works! What a deal. My BlackJack came with a USB cable, and I used it to connect it to my laptop. The laptop saw the phone, and loaded all the necessary drivers from the CD that also came with the phone.

I tried to set up a modem connection on my own, but failed. Next, I went to the Internet and did a search to find out how to do it. I went to a number of sites, each of which explained a different way to connect to the Internet using the BlackJack, and none of them worked. Finally, I found a link to the Cingular site which had a great tutorial as to how make the connection work. If you go to the above link, click on Connect device and laptop/PDA to access internet. The site asks you to detail your setup, and once you have, it takes you to a page that fully details how to make the connection work.

I am posting an excerpt from it for my own purposes of the part in the instructions where the rubber hits the road.

1. Click on Start, Settings, Control Panel and double click on Phone and Modem Options.
2. Click on the Modems tab.
3. Click to select the SAMSUNG CDMA Modem and click on Properties.
4. Click on the Advanced tab.
5. In the Extra initialization commands field, type at+cgdcont=1,”IP”,”isp.cingular”
6. Click on OK twice.

Setting up the connection

1. On the PC, return to the Control Panel.
2. Double click on Network Connections.
3. Click on the link to Create a New Connection.
4. A Network Connection Wizard will appear, click on Next.
5. Tick to select Connect to the Internet.
6. Click on Next.
7. Tick to select Set up my connection manually.
8. Click on Next.
9. Tick to select Connect using a dial-up modem.
10. Click on Next.
11. Check the box to select only the SAMSUNG CDMA Modem.
12. Click on Next.
13. For the ISP Name, type CNG GPRS.
14. Click on Next.
15. Type *99# for the Phone number.
16. Click on Next.
17. Enter ISP@CINGULARGPRS.COM in the User name field.
18. Enter CINGULAR1 in the Password and Confirm password fields.
19. Check to select from the available options below and click on Next.
20. Click on Finish to complete the setup.

Please don’t use these instructions but rather go to the Cingular site yourself and put in your details.

The long and the short of this is it works. Hooray!

I got a new cell phone yesterday. I have been sitting on the sidelines trying to figure out which smart phone to get. There are a lot of options out there, and many of them are extraordinarily expensive. There are a ton of people using Blackberries (AKA Crackberries). The main selling point of these is the push email. That means as soon as you receive an email, it appears on your phone. The downside of Blackberries is the size. It just looks weird when you hold a big square chunk of plastic to your face when you are talking on the phone. Also, Blackberries don’t have the best web-browser.

Another popular device is the Palm Treo. I don’t like those either because the OS has grown stale because the company that designs it has rotted on the vine. An old OS means that new stuff doesn’t work as well, and you are frozen in the past. I know a number of Treo owners, and the 650s at least seem to lock up a bunch. That is not cool when you need your phone. I know there are a bunch of people who love their Treo, but I just didn’t like it.

I decided to save some money, but still get a sleek little smart phone. I bought one of Cingular’s Blackjack phones. I haven’t had it for long but so far it seems pretty cool. I still have a lot to learn about it, but that is the fun part of getting a new phone.

So far, I have successfully set up the email. I can send and receive them, I know that sounds pretty simple, but you try to get one setup on your own… then we’ll talk. The problem is there is at least a 15 minute lag because it only checks for new mail every 15 minutes.

Cingular offers a product called Xpress Mail which supposedly will push the email to my phone, but so far, I haven’t been able to make it work. All the settings are correct, but it doesn’t send the email. It would be great if I could get that to work because the lead time between when someone sends an email and I get it.

In addition to the email Cingular’s Xpress Mail should give me access to my calendar and My Documents, but again, it doesn’t seem to be working right.  I might need to re-boot the computer its on.  I can’t do that because if I re-boot, I will lose connection because it is my office computer, and I’m not there on the weekend.

One other upside to this phone, sometime this summer, my connection to the Internet should become blasting fast when they unveil Cingular’s HSDPA network here in Northwest Arkansas.  They’re calling it 3G. How creative.  Either way, I will enjoy the faster connection.  I’m also interested in seeing if I can pair it with this laptop so that I can have internet anywhere.