Tag Archives: Review

Virgin Mobile Samsung Intercept $25 a month unlimited data and texting

Posted by Tom Schultz on November 3, 2010 None comments
Virgin Mobile Samsung Intercept Keyboard

Virgin Mobile Samsung Intercept $25 a month unlimited data and texting

Pure Awesome!

That’s what I have to say about Virgin Mobile’s new plan and phones. Seriously for $25 a month you can get 300 anytime minutes and unlimited texting and unlimited data.
You don’t get any night or weekend minutes but I don’t use that many minutes anyway. Also if you NEED more minutes you can switch to the $40 a month plan which has 1200 minutes and there’s also a $60 a month plan which is unlimited minutes, texts, data! Seriously! Cheapest plan out there!

Now in the past the problem would be either poor service or crappy phones. Today, Virgin Mobile is using the Sprint network which may not be the best right now but they have been working pretty well for me for the last 3 years.  Virgin Mobile also recently released an Android phone, the Samsung Intercept. This phone has really good reviews from Cnet.  I’ve bought two of them in the last month because my girlfriend and I were going to switch from Sprint(Long story) and the phones seem really solid.

About the Samsung Intercept

It’s not perfect. No phone is perfect really I suppose but for the money(I think you might be able to get them from BestBuy for $220.) it’s near perfect, especially since you have no contract with it.
Firstly there’s the screen. It’s physically just too small for a touch interface. It works,  it’s not like you can’t get by but if it was bigger that would make it easier to use. The keyboard should make up for that issue but it was a little awkward for me at first. Just the placement of keys wasn’t the same as anything I’ve used before.  Didn’t take long to adjust though.

Virgin Mobile Samsung Intercept Keyboard

The slide out keyboard on the Samsung Intercept

Virgin Mobile Samsung Intercept Screen

This is the screen on the Samsung Intercept

Using it isn’t so bad considering that the processor is a mere 667mhz! I loaded many apps on it and it ran everything just fine. I don’t do much for games though so I don’t know how good of a graphics processor it has.

For an awesome deal there isn’t really any plans out there that match it. I think Virgin Mobile is setting a standard for pricing in the mobile market with these new plans. If the major carriers like Sprint, Verizon and AT&T aren’t concerned then they should be.

Review: HP Mini 1010NR

Posted by Tom Schultz on January 25, 2010 None comments

About a month ago I picked up an HP Mini 1010NR.  This netbook has been serving me pretty well over the last month.

The Specs:

1.6 Ghz N270 Intel Atom
512MB of Ram
8gb SSD drive

This is a pretty standard setup and I’ll get more into some of the other hardware in a second.

The laptop is pretty powerful, the only thing lacking in my case is the RAM but that’s fairly easy to upgrade.

It’s keyboard is a little cramped but not nearly as bad as some that I’ve played with at the local Buy More ;)

As soon as I got it I installed Ubuntu Netbook Remix on it and that was a really good decision. The 1010NR runs it fast even with only 512MB of RAM and it detected all the hardware flawlessly. The webcam worked out of the box, the sound, even my USB headset was detected correctly by the Pulse audio server.

There is a strange button by the tack pad that disabled it when you press the button. I think this is because HP assumed the the Mini’s layout is so cramped that you might accidentally hit the mouse when you’re typing but I leave the track pad enabled all the time and I haven’t run into this issue yet.

Ubuntu Remix also seems to work ok with the sleep and hibernate functions but sometimes when you open the lid from a suspend it will shut off or resuspend for some reason. Not a huge deal, as you just resume it with the power button and things are normal again. This happens about 20% of the time.

My biggest gripe at the moment is the wifi card.  The card is a Broadcom BCM4312b/g now most people won’t care about this but this card does not seem to support monitor mode. So if you expect to use the HP Mini 1010NR for wifi network diagnostics or war driving you’re probably out of luck for a little bit.

Some people might be able to get it working. I’ve read that it might be possible. I believe there are two versions of the BCM4312, one that is a/b/g and one that is b/g. My HP Mini 1010NR came with the b/g version so I think it has limited support for some features. If you can get Monitor mode working with this card let me know how you did it!

The battery life is par with other laptops and netbooks. I get about 2-3 hours depending on usage.  The screen can be very bright which is nice to look at but it drains the battery fast if it’s all the way up.

Over all this is a pretty decent netbook if you can get it for super cheap. There are some things I would like to see like an illuminated keyboard and bluetooth(option mine doesn’t have).

Drobo

Posted by decoy on October 25, 2009 3 comments

I recently picked up a Drobo because like many other people in the IT world that know better, I haven’t been worried about backing up my data.

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OS Critique: Ubuntu

Posted by Eric Shull on February 16, 2009 None comments

Well, it’s time to finish critiquing the Big Three desktop operating systems. I’ve already critiqued Windows and Mac, and now I have a few comments about Ubuntu and Linux in general.

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