Wade – 1 | Cell Phone Companies – 0

So after school i dropped by the local sprint store, if you read the last post you know why, and they promptly took care of me. Which was amazing in itself…

After i spoke with the clerk she walked back to the repair window to see if my phone was there, and upon arriving back at her station she had a brand new Treo as well as my old cell phone. Turns out they don’t carry my cell phone anymore so I’m eligible for one of equal or better quality. So when it was all said and done i left the sprint store with a bran new cell phone, one that is better than my previous one. Thanks sprint for working in my favor… for once. Hopefully it wont happen again cause now i got my one freebie, huh?

It’s just one of those things…

Let’s have a little chat about cell phone companies shall we? Cell phone companies SUCK; they’re just one of those things that everyone hates, but you cant live without them. I’m sure if you’re like me whenever you deal with cell phones, plans, companies, or whatever; you feel like your totally being violated and ripped off. Well, don’t feel bad because its a normal feeling in the cell phone industry… Let me elaborate:

Last night my cell phone broke, it fell from my hands onto the floor, and being as I have a pocket PC the majority of the cell phone is the screen. During it’s fall it hit the corner of something and sent a nice little crack across the entire screen. Today i went to get it exchanged, i always try to buy those lovely insurance plans that the cell phone companies offer you, even though its probably all part of their plan to steal all my money anyway.

When i arrived at the local sprint store, it wasn’t too busy, i was pretty amazed. They always have this protocol that they have to go through, which is fine, except that i own a company and every minute I’m without a cell phone is another minute I’m disconnected from my main source of income, and any clients that might want to chit-chat… I digress, they told me that they want to see if they can repair it, and that it would be about 30 minutes, since i was late for class i didn’t stay. I already know what they’re going to tell me when i go back today: “Sorry, we can’t repair it. Unfortunately we don’t have any phones of your model in stock, so we’ll have to ship one to you in 2-3 weeks.” Wow, thanks, thats NO help at all. Maybe i can convince them to overnight it or something.

Anyway, the moral of the story is, cell phone companies are pretty full of crap. I bet it only takes 10 bucks to make a cell phone, that we pay 300 dollars for, not to mention their plans are extremely overpriced, and then at one point or another you’re killed be overages. You know what the best part is though? Cell phones are great, and we all love them. So bitching aside, can’t afford to live with them, can’t afford to live without them.

Desktop X AKA Object Desktop

So i decided that i would download this, usuallyI'm against this because programs that allow you to do extra things on windows, that you normally cannot do are resource hogs. But I decided that i would put this to the test, and update this post as a go..

Before Object Desktop:
Granted im running on the IBM Thinkpad R51, which im sure my school has over-loaded with tons of crap here are my current stats:
PF Usage: 562
Processes: 64
CPU Usage: Average of about 3% (Which is normally the idle process.)

Now what i want to compare that too is the difference after Object Desktop is installed and has a few widgets running. Really the reason i want to install this anyway is to have a CPU, and RAM monitor. Simple things, but is it worth the cost?

Now i'm back, Object Desktop installed, i even had time to download a little extra stuff.

Now that object desktop is running, with a ram meter, and a CPU meter, how much of a difference in resources do i have? Well lets see:

After Object Desktop:
PF Usage: 565
Processes: 67
CPU Usage: Average of about 3% with occasional spikes to 7%

So it would seem that i've just about taken NO resouce hit thus far, now if it just preforms stable while im using other programs we shouldnt have a problem. I think i'll keep Object desktop around for a little while and post here if anything weird happens. I've heard plenty of rumors that it crashes windows, comes with spyware, etc… So far none of them are true, we'll see though.