Blackberry 8220 and Google apps without data plan works!

I have BB8220 and I do not have any sort of data plan thru TMO. All I have is wifi UMA for data usage. I just love the convenience of checking my mail right after I wake up without going thru the loop of starting up Vista PC, login, Outlook. And my Blackberry Flip works just fine for this purpose. However there are tons of contradicting report about what works and what's not without a data plan.
Here is a breakdown of steps that you need to follow to get Gmail app going.
1) Subscribe to $25 data plan at Tmobile website. This will download the necessary service book entries to your BB device.
2) Call Customer service (speak blackberry in voice prompt and it will take you to the right department). Ask CSR to enable "Blackberry feature enabler" in your phone.
3) Restart phone.
4) Check if Gmail is working fine (it should as you still have data plan on).
5) Cancel data plan (daily charge is about 80 cents).
6) check your Gmail app again.

My BB browser is set to use Hotspot Browser, so it works without any problem. So does Opera mini and GMaps/Gsync. It works fine for me. hope it will do the same for you too. Yahoo apps used to work fine, but for the last few days it is not.

Sending and receiving free fax

FAX is one of the arcane tools that we still have to use at times like a old floppy drive. Unsurprisingly it costs quite a bit to send and receive a fax. For sometime, I used to use faxzero.net for my outgoing fax; but recently switched over to Callcentric.com for my VOIP needs and they handle outgoing fax very well through an ATA adaptor. However receiving fax is not very easy in Callcentric with only one dedicated number (yes, you can purchase another number for fax receiving only for about $3.50). So I use nifty eFax for my incoming fax needs. Unfortunately, free account with eFax does not offer a local number, but that is not a big deal. Efax however loves to install junkware in order to view your fax (they email you a file with .efx extension which must be opened with eFax messenger, and I hate that program). But I found a very old copy of efax messenger that does not happen to install crapware and you can view your .efx files just fine; you can also export your fax to a more common tiff or jpeg format with this program. best of all, this one works absolutely well in 32 bit versions of Vista and Windows XP.

TVpack installation in Vista X86 PC

1. Prepare a machine with clean install of Windows Vista Service Pack 1.
1. The machine will need to meet or exceed the minimum hardware requirements for Windows Vista -http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919183
2. The Windows Vista Service Pack 1 operating system must be Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate (x86 or x64)
3. Following operating system install, do not launch Windows Media Center or go through Windows Media Center Setup
2. Install Windows Media Center TV Pack 2008
1. Windows Media Center TV Pack 2008 (x86)
2. Windows Media Center TV Pack 2008 (x64)
3. Install the PlayReady PC Runtime
1. PlayReady PC Runtime (x86) - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=dadc6bf4-a615-4f23-a7cc-b7569c05d305&DisplayLang=en
2.
PlayReady PC Runtime (x64) - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ec9ac8f4-6209-4aea-a302-d9f33a7d4f64&DisplayLang=en
4. Install the following patches from the Download Center
1. KB951685 (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/951685) - The video playback application stops responding when you watch video or Live TV on a Windows Vista-based computer
2. KB950754 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950754) - Noticeable problems occur in the video when you use the DirectSound renderer on Windows Vista
5. Install any required or recommended Windows Updates
6. Launch Windows Media Center and go through Windows Media Center Setup

Save the green

Hereby, I am making a pledge that I will go GREEN! I already use double sided printing and use e-statement wherever possible. And I will continue to use my savings for the future.
Linky

T-mobile rocks

After staying with At&T for the last 4 year, I moved to T-mobile this month and I can not be happier in my last 4 days worth of experience. The customer support folks are superb- they way they handle the calls and they way they know what they are doing are very much superlative compared to any other business I have dealt with in last few years. I hope to get a similar level of service once I am out of the 30 days return trial period.
Oh, I forgot to add- a human voice can be reachable in 2 minutes only- no more long term torture of jazzy music for me.

Xming rocks with XFce4

I run a tiny ubuntu server in my home network which basically does it all for me- Squid/Apache/Asterisk/FTP and offcourse as my NAS device through SAMBA. I restored two 10 year old Dell to make a single usable machine with 400MHz P3 processor and 128X3 SDRAM. The machine is slow by any means unless you want to comaper to a 486, but it does the work and it does the work really well for me. That P3 chip sips very little power being a 24W rated processor. I don't think the whole machine does not sip more than 50W daily, but I may be wrong.

Anyway, the point is, while I do most of admin stuff thru ssh, once in a while I really like to get into my servers X-server. From Windows machines, the only free option that really worked for me is Xming. However, Gnome works really slowly even under really stripped down form. What I found that Xfce4 works like a charm. All I have to do is invoke xfce4-session from Xming starting dialogue.