The Fuze Phone

I felt the need to get a phone a little more suited to internet access lately. With that in mind, I took home a Fuze phone, and .... returned it the next morning because, well, it was awful.

The awfulness was a combination of hardware design and software problems. First, the Fuze does not allow the user to do much in the way of customizing buttons. Further, the push to talk button is located in a spot that is almost impossible not to hit several times a day. I suppose that's fine if you use push to talk a lot, but I don't, and it quickly became an annoyance to have to decline subscribing to a push to talk service every time I hit the stupid button.

Then, there was the fact that the user is given one menu system if the phone is in portrait mode (with the keyboard hidden) and a completely different menu when the phone is in landscape mode and the keyboard is out. That is seriously bad design. What it means is that, if you are in a program, and suddenly need to pull out the keyboard, your running program will simply disappear to be replaced by a menu. Not good.

Then, for some unexplained reason, although I was able to get local weather, news and other information on my former phone (a Motorola Q phone), none of those services was available for the Fuze. As long as you want the weather for a fairly large city (say Austin, Texas), you are good to go .... but forget it if you live in the sticks.

I also took home a case that was supposed to fit the Fuze (it said so on the box). Sadly, the Fuze didn't work if you put it in the Fuze case. The touch screen became completely unresponsive. So, are you supposed to take the phone out of the case everytime you need to do something with it?? It's a snap on case that is supposed to give you access to all of the phone features while remaining on the phone for protection. So .... come again?? Take it completely off the phone in order to use the phone?? No thank you.

While I was debating whether to go back to using my Motorola Q and simply giving up the idea of moving more of my general data into the cloud, I got a chance to play with an iPhone at the same store where I was returning the Fuze. Gee, fast internet access, the touch screen works even while it's in the case, local news and weather (even for the hick town in which I live), end result .... sold, one more iPhone.

Difficult for me to do simply because I am not a fan of Apple products generally (I don't like products that make it difficult or impossible for the user to service at home if need be, and with iPods and iPhones and the related Apple products, the user isn't even able to change the battery), but the iPhone (3G) is proving to be the best choice for me, and I couldn't be much happier with it (well, maybe if they made it so I could change the battery ....).

I have begun a rather daunting project of organizing my home, which means my office, shop and home since they are all located at the same address.

One of the things that was making this a little difficult for me was that I was trying to use rooms in the house in a manner that had been predetermined for me by the builder. If the builder had put a toilet, sink and shower in a room, then it must be a bathroom, right? I should therefore use it as a bathroom, right? Wrong.

What I needed on my second floor was a utility room/closet. Not two bathrooms. I've got four bathrooms in this house. Why would a person living alone need four bathrooms?? The guest room has a bathroom connected to it, the master bedroom has a bathroom connected to it, and there is a small bathroom just off the entry. That alone is more than I need. So, the additional bathroom upstairs is about to be re-purposed into the utility room I really need.

I also ran across an article (in another blog that I intend to start reading on a regular basis). I share it with you now: How to Organize Mental Clutter. I plan to start putting these ideas into practice tonight.