Palm Centro, Kul but problems

We are here in New Orleans waiting on word of a rental application we submitted last week. As part of settling in to a new home I got a family cell phone plan with local numbers. In Trinidad we used pay as you go phones from the local GSM/ATT affiliate, Edge Wireless.

I originally wanted to get an ATT plan for national coverage, but the Palm Centro carried only by Sprint was luring me. I had looked at one in Lake Havasu while we were stuck there with a broken truck, but the shop said that they sent their Centros back for some problem. She said that they were hotsync'ing in a loop. That didn't make any sense to me so I put it out of my mind. Hotsyncs only happen when you push the button on the connector cable, no?

So we got two phones in the mail from letstalk.com. I read about Letstalk on some spam post on a bulletin board. That was one spam that worked. Got the Centro and a Sanyo Katana 8500 for Madame. She wanted a belle music phone. That Katana kinda sucks, it is really difficult to find and play the music on yr SD card. Everything is pushed thru the sprint data network. "Vision plans" they call it. Works pretty fast here in N'awlins tho.

So the Centro is pretty nice. Never had a Treo but I've been using a Palm TX for two years and enjoy fiddling with the system, altho it is easy to make it unstable. The stock Centro seemed very stable. It does have three different email programs, which seems very strange. The 'Sprint mobile email' program I set up to get my netscape/aim mail, but it never sync'ed again and I couldn't find any menus or buttons to make it work again. The palm stock email program, variously called Versa Mail or Multi Mail, is there. Then there is Messaging as well as IM. I also installed Agendus Mail which I am used to using on my TX. I installed Agendus 12 from Iambic, an upgrade from the Agendus 11 which I had paid for.

Google maps works very well; I was able to find Rayne Methodist Church and Whole Foods with it. Yesterday I was searching for the Louisiana Office of Motor Vehicles and attempted to use Google maps to search. It kept stalling, then eventually reporting that all sockets in the network were used up. Huh? Never seen that before.

It reset, I tried again and the same situation happened; no sockets and then reset. I thought that MobileWrite or clips might be causing problems. A Treo has no graffiti handwriting recognition, or an area to write in, so a graffiti replacement program of some sort is required. I was using graffiti 1 to replace graffiti 2 on the TX.

About an hour after Google maps started crashing the Centro started trying to run hotsync repeatedly. With no cable plugged in. I pushed home, or phone, but hotsync would immediately run. Eventually it reset/crashed. Hotsync started again within a few minutes. A terminal disease, looks like.

I figured it must be hardware, as hotsync is triggered by connecting two signals within the connector thingie on the bottom. There is a program icon to do this as well, when you are using bluetooth or the network to sync.

After more thought and reading something, I decided to hard reset the unit and start all over again. The 'no sockets' error made me think that the "Sprint Mobile Email" program was trying to get mail but never receiving. The icon for that program is there but I cannot find it within the file system with Filez or 3gx or Resco Explorer. I put the new version of RescoEx in, will have to pay for that program again.

So, hard reset, then re-install minus clips and MultiWrite. I have the graffiti anywhere prog from Splash data in now. It is more expensive but looks quite well done; better features and configuation.

Have to use it a few days to see what happens. The tentative word is that software conflicts can indeed cause a Centro to go into a hotsync infinite loop and crash the phone.

trip to Louisianne

Our trip to Louisiana was a bit more eventful than I had hoped. The Dodge sprang a trouble light on the way out of Humboldt. I checked it with my computer tuner thingie and it reported a misfire on cylinder 8. I zero'd it out and kept going. I'd been irritated by trouble lights for about a year due to a power steering pump sensor. Apparently it tells the computer when the power steering is working to force a slight increase in the idle speed. If idling, that is. So I was not too worried by this report of a misfire.

Two days later it was actually misfiring at idle in the gas station just across the Arizona border from Needles. Premium gasoline in Needles costs $4.06. We arrived at Auntie Bernice's in Lake Havasu on Sunday night after Thanksgiving. The next day I took it into a recommended Chrysler shop for a checkup. Error codes had spiraled to vastyness. A failed oxygen sensor and injector errors along with the misfire. Bummer. Then it turned out that cylinder 8 was showing 75 pounds of compression. Ah. Heart drops.

I bought this truck new, my first new four wheeled vehicle. I babied it, changing the oil many times the first few thousand miles, then running synthetic. So, I authorized a valve job on the right head. Two thousand dollars later the shop starts it up and it bangs and seizes. Pulling the head back off reveals a disintegrated number 8 piston. Incredible.

I just put four new tires and shocks on it and that is about the value of the truck at this point. Now I have to put in a new long block engine. The shop is very sympathetic and helpful but it is going to cost me $6,000 to get a running truck back. That might be the value of it when it is done, might be a bit more than it's value.