Ik ben al een paar dagen bezig met het voorbereiden van mijn reis naar de Frankfurter Buchmesse, de grootste en belangrijkste (algemene) boekenbeurs ter wereld. Ik zal 3 dagen onderweg zijn en ben apparatuur (notebook, camera’s, telefoon, draadloos oortje), aan het opladen, lijsten aan het maken van de stands die ik in ieder geval wil bezoeken, wassen aan het draaien. Je wilt tenslotte ook op een megabeurs wel met een schone onderbroek lopen, net als anders. ;-D

De meeste moeite heb ik nu met het vinden van een mogelijkheid om draadloos Internet op te kunnen. Vanwege de enorme drukte op de beurs is de verblijfplaats van de groep waar ik mee ga, in Worms (D), de stad van jawel Maarten Luther, maar ook van een Rasji, een groot(s) joods geleerde.

Het hotel vraagt € 2,10 per half uur, licht pittig naar mijn mening. Gelukkig ben ik een Fonero, maar dan moet er wel een andere Fonero een beetje in de buurt zitten. ;-)

Op de beurs sleep ik geen notebook mee, die parkeren we bij een garderobe dat spreekt!

The Hague Public Library is finally starting to offer FREE Wi-Fi to it’s visitors, but don’t hooray to soon! It is only a municipal pilot till mid september.

The WLAN signal will be available on the 5st floor only. It is a slow start, but it IS a start!

Now I can start using my notebook and Nokia E61i… ;-)

…my old car stereo today…

I did take it out of my car yesterday, but I forgot to get the CD (Chaka Khan’s Epiphany) out…

So I had to kill it!

By that I did save Chaka!!

As I love techtoys I always want to have new stuff to play with…

Since a few years already I am into geocaching (for Dutchies: go HERE), a game that sounds like old skool, as in treasure hunting. But it isn’t. It is a game for adults and kids to play all over the globe (I did it in: France, Israel, The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Greece and Spain). But there is one thing you need and that is a decent handheld (!) GPS. There have always been two camps: Garmin users and Magellan users. I am a Magellan user, because of its superieur quality. But that aside.

As handheld GPS devices are very very very expensive in Europe, I have been looking around the globe. And I did find a seller of a new Magellan eXplorist 600 in the USA. The price was very nice, which means a difference of about 200 euro (read: about US dollar 272, including shipping)!!! Yes, that is right!

I wanted the seller to ship to a friend in the US, who’s mother is going to take it to The Netherlands end of this months, just to save shipping costs and import duty, ofcourse . I did buy it and payed within a few minutes.
After 9 days of hearing nothing I did ask the seller about the status of the shipping. My friends didn’t see anything coming. Then I got a swift reply that my US address was not confirmed and that he was not going to send it. A few minutes later I had my money back on PayPal. But only AFTER my claim where the shipping was.
The discussion that followed after that was short but clear. I couldn’t trust the guy anymore… I might have made a mistake by not reading all the rules, but only after asking what was wrong I got a very short answer and my money back. Without any other way to get a solution what I asked.

I did not expect to get into an eBay dispute anyhow. But the old proverb is true: evil doers are evil dreaders. You would rather not buy at LJ Electronics on eBay.

I now did buy it at DragonFlyDirect. Thank you for you confidence!

While you are here: check out my new GPS Blog: GPS Passion

My almost Siamese twin ;-) Servaas and I have been discussing our switch from the Palm Treo 680 to the Nokia E61 as main phone an awfull lot… Before AND after….

We use our phone entirely different and so our needs concerning programs and available data are far from simular. But we both think the Nokia E61 is far superiour to the Treo 680 concerning connections.
We both thought we could live without WLAN and superiour Bluetooth support (like hearing the ringing tone in your ear through the BT headset) and that’s why we got both our 680’s flown in from the US by his BIL. (cheers Mate!)

But we simply can’t! A smartphone without WiFi is OLD SKOOL!!

I really want to have my data so I am still shopping for good replacements for Palm software on the Symbian platform.
I will miss: Datebk6 (respect!!), SmartListtoGo, CacheMate, Currency, HandyShopper (respect!!), and a lot of other programs.

I have both phones now. Use my E61 for communication and my Treo 680 for data storage now…

After having been a true Palm believer for quite some years, I am almost over. Palm has not been good to me (and lost of other users!) the last few years. I did read about every forum, blog, webpage on the globe, so I am not alone.

Last x-mas I made my last in-Palm switch, I am afraid. I had quite some trouble to (not even) get a copper Palm Treo 680 to Europe. I had to live with that and I did….

Then we had the new about the battery of the 680. Then we couldn’t use our cradle with the same (okay, almost same) pinout of the 650. We heard that this was one of the problems.
I could have lived without WLAN (Wi-Fi) support, but now I am so fed up with my Palm Treo 680, that it will be replaced soon…

More about this soon! (But believe me that I am NOT Happy!)