makeourbigday is live

www.makeourbigday.co.uk is live today. Makeourbigday is an event and wedding gift registry website. It enables you to ask for money instead of presents and to take online payments with major credit cards or paypal.

Gateway notebook shows wrong model number

My notebook is a Gateway M-6834 Notebook.

I recently had to restore my Windows Vista Home Premium OS from the backup image on drive D because it was malfunctioning and was not usable.

After I restored I noticed that in Control Panel->System and Maintenance->System it says my model is Gateway M-6750. Therefore, they seem to have the wrong image at least on drive D. I can’t be certain if the model number was always wrong before the restore because I don’t remember looking.

My notebook is no longer on warranty. I contacted Gateway to try and find out what was going on but they would not talk to me unless I paid for support so Gateway is no help on this issue.

The notebook seems to work OK after the restore so I am not going to worry about it.

I only had one other problem with the notebook. When the notebook was on warranty it had a bad keyboard that would intermittently print extra characters when pressing some keys and I had to send it back in to the factory to get it fixed. This seems to have been fixed OK.

Google Voice

I am using Gizmo5 with Google Voice so I can make free phone calls from PC to landline. With the first two calls from PC to landline I had perfect reception; however, the other party said my voice was garbled and hard to understand. I was using wi-fi with my notebook and a headset for these calls. I will try again in the future but unless I can get better call quality I don't think it will be very usable for calls to a landline; however, the main purpose for me is to use it as an answering machine.

Geocities discontinued

Geocities is being discontinued by Yahoo.

I hosted a personal home page and a webpage for blackjack explorer on Geocities.

Blackjack Explorer was discontinued and has been replaced by Blackjack Unleashed.

My home page is also hosted by google at Loren Brown's Home Page.

T-Mobile Nokia 1661 Review

I bought the Nokia 1661 cell phone for the T-Mobile prepaid service on sale at Target for $14.99.

The Nokia 1661 has basic features like a calendar, clock, alarm, reminder, calculator, call log, themes, speakerphone, and 3 free games. Two less common features include an FM radio and a flashlight. It comes with a hands free headset and microphone. The headset is required for the FM radio to work because it uses it as an antenna.

It does not have bluetooth, web browser, GPRS, GPS, camera, or mp3.

Overall I like this phone and would recommend it as a basic phone. The keys on the keyboard are a little small but work fine for me since I don’t text much. I found the sound level to be fine. I like the small and thin size of the phone. The screen is bright. The controls are easy to use. The battery life is good, rated at 4.2 hours talk and 20 days standby.

I thought my battery life was kind of short because I was recharging every couple of days but I thought it might be because I was using the phone. However, after I tested I found the battery life of my phone was only about 4 days on standby. It is suppose to get 20 days so 4 days is definitely not normal. Therefore, I took my phone back to Target and exchanged it for a new one.

I tested the new cell phone and get around 12 days on standby. This is still shorter than the 20 days it is suppose to get but I assume it is normal so I will keep this one.

Canceled landline for cell phone

I canceled my landline and have been using just my cell phone for several months. It is more convenient to use a cell phone because it is always with me.

I use a prepaid cell phone plan from t-mobile that cost about 10 cents a minutes.

I just purchased a new cell phone, the Nokia 1661, from Target for $14.99.

I also just signed up for google voice and plan on using it as an answering machine.