Saturday, October 04, 2008

last-minute techie fun

I am planning on taking my old (non-telephone) iPaq to Turkey (instead of my precious 8100, which I'd hate to lose, break, or have stolen). It does WiFi and actually has a larger more-readable screen than the SmartPhone.

I loaded a gig of music and my entire address book on it. Then, I read on my favorite Turkey Travel site about using Skype, rather than buying a phone card, to talk to folks back home.

I loaded it up on my iPaq (free download), bought $10 worth of credits (so that I can call any phone) and tried it out. It did work (calling my home phone and talking to Karen, sitting right next to me), but there was a noticeable delay.

For grins, I contacted Joe in Florida and we did a computer-to-computer call, using my home WiFi, and the sound quality and response time was superb. It was uncanny, turning my I-thought-it-was-totally-obsolete iPaq into a phone. I better rewrite that craigslist ad, where I was hoping to dump that device for whatever I could get for it.

If anyone out there has a Skype account, send me your ID, at blavine@usa.net

Karen is at work, trying to finish that last couple of briefs before we leave Monday night. I am playing with my toys, and putting off packing for another few hours.

Ciao!

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:26 AM

    Hi Barry,

    You must be so excited for your upcoming trip! Are you going to be blogging while on the road?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Probably not, unless I can find a real computer at one of the hotels. I don't know if my iPaq is smart enough to run blogspot's Java Editor app.

    Also, from what I've heard, the Turkish keyboard is quite different from the US/English keyboard, which could make for some interesting gibberish!

    ReplyDelete