A New Mobile Phone

 A few weeks ago I wrote about trying to decide if I should get a new mobile phone and use it as a dedicated work phone. As luck would have it, the mobile phone I use as our house phone stopped holding a charge. While it used to go a week or so between charges, it could only go 24 hours. It was time to replace the device. Fortunately I had already done a lot of research and had some good ideas on what to replace it with.

The phone that stopped holding a charge was a very robust demo unit given to me by Sony. I loved that phone as it had one of the best cameras at the time. I took it with me to Fiji and captured some amazing photos that no other phone at the time could match. As that trip took place a year before COVID, phones have improved a lot since then. I also have not taken many photos with that phone since I relegated it to home-phone duty. In fact, I hardly ever answer that phone as the only people that call it are scam artists or telemarketers. It is nice to keep the phone number though as it is the one tied to countless accounts and we do receive important calls on it about twice a year.

I decided to list out all of the features I need in a phone and it wasn't that long. I need the phone to be able make calls, text, work with 5G, and be as cheap as possible. While my carrier offers free phones, that comes with the catch of a service contract for several years. While I doubt I will change wireless companies, I do want to keep that option open. Besides I knew I could find a pretty cheap phone based on previous research.

Next I did an Internet search on cheap Android phones. There is only one option if I needed an iPhone and that is the SE which costs more than I wanted to spend. The search string I used was, "Cheapest smartphones for 2023." I got a nice list and looked a bit more into each of them. Ultimately I decided on the Motorola Moto G Stylus 5G 256GB (Unlocked). Best Buy had them on sale for $200 and that is an amazing deal for what you get. It has a very fast processor, 256GB of storage, and a stylus for those times when your finger is just too fat.

So what are the downsides? The phone is massive. It is not quite large enough to be a tablet but it sure isn't small enough to fit in my pants pocket without being uncomfortable when I go to sit down. That is fine though as it technically is our home phone and will stay at the house.

I have had the phone for a couple of weeks now and it is working as expected. There are a number of software updates and they installed flawlessly. I've experimented with the phone to see if I should install my work e-mail and it would work perfectly for that. Now all I need to do is see about loading it with movies and bringing it on a plane so I don't have to rely on the seat-back screen in front of me.

What is Cloud Computing?

Friday I got an e-mail from the Oracle Alumni list of which I am a subscriber. The message had a link to a YouTube video where Larry Ellison and Ed Zander talk about cloud computing as well as a few other topics. The video was interesting to me because I know both gentlemen who are big names in the computer industry. However I think it would be boring for most everyone else and so I won't bother to provide the link.

For those that don't know, Larry Ellison is the CEO of Oracle Corporation. When I first started at Oracle back in January of 1986, it was not uncommon to see Larry walking down the hall dribbling a basketball just after a quick game across the street. He is now one of the richest men in the world and understandable a lot less approachable.

Ed Zander and my Dad used to work together back at Data General in the 80's. I remember going to company softball games and meeting Ed. Every couple of years or so, he goes skiing with my Dad at Deer Valley and I manage to invite myself along for the trip. Ed left Data General and evenutally found himself as President of Sun Microsystems (just purchased by Oracle). Most recently he was CEO of Motorola.

The video was fun to watch as Larry got very animated when the topic of cloud computing was mentioned. Larry pointed out that cloud computing is really the computer industry going in circles. He is right. Twenty or thirty years ago we just called it timesharing, which is different than buying a piece of a condo or luxury apartment.

Five or six years ago there was a big emphasis on how McDonalds was not in the business of selling fast food. Instead they were in the business of real estate. Companies like Google, Salesforce.com, and Amazon have taken a page from the McDonalds playbook and realize that one of their core competencies is in creating bullet-proof data centers. They then provide access to these data centers through the Internet. This is cloud computing. You tell the provider what type of environment you want (i.e., RAM, Operating System, Services like e-mail, database, or web server, etc.) and they set it up for you.

Cloud computing makes it much easier to do things like set up websites. It is also a great way to borrow a computer for testing without having to buy one. So cloud computing makes it easier to create your own BLOG (this one is hosted by Google) but it probably won't directly effect your own home computing environment.

Now if all the cloud computing companies can figure out that McDonalds started loosing marketshare when they forgot they were in the food business, we won't have to watch the decline of our favorite online bookstore.