Things will be a bit slow around here until I find my bearings again. I just moved to another apartment this past weekend. There were a few reasons for moving, from wanting to find cheaper rent with upcoming expenses (which is also why you’ll see me experimenting with different ads on this blog) like paying for my own health insurance and starting to pay student loans, as well as wanting to live in a pet-friendly place so I can adopt a big dog/running companion (currently looking at labrador mixes).
I found a nice loft-style apartment that had the same amazing fiber ISP I’ve had for the last year. I’m happy to report that the pipe is just as fat as my old place. If you ever find yourself apartment hunting in midtown Atlanta and DirecPath/PurDigital/Biltmore Communications is listed as one of the available ISPs, you better seal the deal. They’re the best ISP I have ever dealt with. When was the last time you paid for a service rated at 10 megabits and got over 70 megabits download speed and 45 megabits upload speed? I’m never going back to Comcast.
Holy Bandwidth Batman!!
That being said, with a static IP the service runs about $70 a month. Somehow I only paid $22/month for the same service at my old apartment; I believe it was subsidized by the building community.
As for the move, I was concerned with how I was going to move (and not break) my 50-inch plasma HDTV. I was especially worried as plasmas are notoriously prone to cracking with even subtle flexing, much more so than LCDs. I hired professional movers that touted themselves as being good at moving large televisions. Well, I didn’t have this in mind…
Despite that shoddy padding, the HDTV survived the massive 5 block trek.
With the new place I also decided a desk upgrade was in order. I went to Ikea and got the largest desk I could find. A 63″ by 47″ Galant desk was just the ticket. The most important aspect of this desk is that it’s deep and I don’t have to be so close to the monitor. I originally sold my old 30-inch Dell LCD because my desk wasn’t deep enough to comfortably use it. I’ve been using a 24-inch since then, but we’ll see if a 30-inch is in my future again.
Living Room/Office area
Unfortunately, I now live in a dead zone. I’ll see how much of an issue this is over the coming weeks and then decide from there if I need to research cell phone repeaters/boosters. It could stem from a variety of issues from building construction, AT&T network coverage or just weak iPhone 3G reception. Either way, it’s very frustrating. Text messages work okay, it will just grab those when it gets a little signal. Otherwise, I miss a lot of calls.
What are your experiences with cell phone “dead zones”.. any remedies?
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The ISP’s connection is crazy fast and you’ve loved their service at two locations now, yet your speeds are showing as being 6x their average and 2.8/5 rating? Weird.
I think it has something with me being in midtown where they have great performance. Can’t speak for their other offerings.
Get a cheap VoIP alternative for the apartment.
Skype (their incoming call package) works nicely, specially since you have such a fast internet connection.
by chance do you have a google voice number? If so, just have your phone fwd to your gvoice number whenever you are not available, and then run Gizmo [http://gizmo5.com/] on your laptop (which gvoice can be fwd’d to, and is MAC friendly) and you’re all set! Or, if you don’t have gvoice and don’t want to wait for it to open to everyone else, you can try Magic Jack [http://www.magicjack.com/4/index.asp] (also mac friendly), which is another CHEAP voip service
I installed a Cell Phone repeater/amplifier/booster in one of the houses I lived at a few years back. This consisted of a high gain antenna outside on the roof, cable back to an amplifier inside + a small inside antenna. This may not work so well in an apartment though (unless you get an OK from your housing manager).
Another option might be to leave your cell phone where you actually do have coverange (like a window), and depend on a good bluetooth headset heavily so you can still be mobile while talking on the phone.
Congrats on the new flat Paul! I like the “industrial” look it has with the air conditioning duct going through the room!
Paul – congrats on the move. AT&T should be sampling femtocells this year. If you can hang on for 6 months with a hacked solution the best solution will present itself.
In the meantime, try Skype and WiFi.
@Andrew Schmitt
Here is some more info from early April on the AT&T femtocell rollout. It looks like June is a possibility:
Engadget Mobile
What apartment complex in midtown did you end up choosing?
I would use a VoIP solution, with a standalone Cisco phone and a dedicated number, especially with your internet connection.
If you’re away, you can forward VoIP incoming calls to your mobile. If you’re at home, you can forward incoming mobile calls to the VoIP number. I think there should be an iPhone app that activates call fw automatically based on your position.
In this way you can keep a private number (your mobile, for friends and family) and a public number (your VoIP, for your job), and at the same time you don’t miss any call (family/friends/job), even when yo’ure away, using call forwarding.
Cell phone on the window ledge with a decent Bluetooth headset might be your best bet for cell coverage. Some ability to forward calls to a VoIP solutions is a close second.
thing is even right on the window sill i get horrible reception. sometimes it will say 1-2 bars but the voice quality is very bad and people on the other side can barely hear me
I’ve found that AT&T really has an excessive number of dead zones and weak spots throughout Atlanta. My house is a prime example. Works fine in the front yard, breaks up like crazy in the backyard.
Does your reception improve if you drop it to Edge? I found that helped on mine at home. I jailbroke the phone and installed this thing called SBSettings so I have an easy toggle between 3G and Edge. Just swipe your finger across the top of the screen at any time, a thing drops down, and you can toggle it on and off along with WiFi, SSH, Phone, Bluetooth, etc.
That sucks about your AT&T reception. I switched to AT&T just for the iPhone 3G last July, from Sprint. With Sprint, I had 1-5 dropped calls per week and GREAT reception at home, even in the basement. With AT&T, I get 1-5 dropped calls per day and crappy reception at home. (Metro Detroit Northern Suburb)\
Dude, that’s a lot of bandwith! Congrats on the new place, my friend. Looks awesome!
Switch carriers. I’m w/o AT&T service 8-10 hours a day at the office. Waiting to see what the summer phone lineup looks like and Pre reviews before jumping ship. Cancellation fee will suck. But not as badly as having a worthless iPhone most of the day (no WiFi at work).
Put Skype on that iPhone, then just make a WiFi network in your loft. dead zone gone.
Your plasma reminds me of a time when the company I worked for, in 1995 mind you, needed to have a high end SPARC box flown from Adelaide to Melbourne (the box alone was worth US$100K, let alone the data). They hired the “tech” arm of a moving company, paid exorbitant rates ($800+ for the shipping, 500 miles, without insurance – we used the company’s insurance). In Melbourne, I awaited its arrival. In came a guy with a box, about the size of half a dozen family pizza boxes. He proceeded to toss/drop it three feet onto (carpeted) floor, waved, and left.
Five minutes later I was on the phone to the courier company demanding a refund.
I’m late to the party but…congrats on the new apartment and on Zoey! You really scored with that internet..the fastest around here is around 7-8 Mbps down—and that’s cable. Panama City, Florida area isn’t wired for super-fast internet. You’d think it would be, but it’s not.
Nice place Paul.
Where did you get the clock shown in the photo??
Take a look at this for your mobile problems: pipe them through your broadband.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femtocell
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6916125.stm
Yeah I’m awaiting AT&T’s 3G MicroCell to come out in (rumored) June. Until then I got a Vonage VOIP line and have been playing around with a cell signal booster.
Lab mixes? Haha nice. Missy is turning 17 next month! They last a long time man. Like, your kid could be in junior high when the dog is still living.
DirecPath is horrible. Get out while you can. I’m in collections because they haven’t been able to cancel my service for 4 straight months. I’ve called every month and they say they will fix it, but it turns out that all customer service is outsourced and can do nothing but take a message and give you a worthless reference number.
DirecPath sucks!
Now THAT’S bandwidth !http://bit.ly/xQAg3 Lucky @stammy. All round his place for your ahem ‘linux distros’ !
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