I made the horrible mistake of installing iOS 4 yesterday evening before going to bed. I had planned about an hour for evertyhing to be done, but boy, was I wrong.
To make it short, this is now my third attempt at completely restoring my iPod. One of the problems that kept occurring was that while I was doing something else on my computer, iTunes kept just popping up and as expected at least one of these times I was just hitting return, which basically cancelled the whole clean installation process. I’m pretty sure that that was end of it. From then on I kept on trying to do a full restore, but since my library consists of a respectable 3270 songs, this takes a while. Like more than an hour.
This morning I thought I’d get it done before taking off for work, but there was an estimated ten to fifteen minutes missing until the whole thing was done and I had to cancel the syncing. Now this is the third attempt and I don’t think I have another choice but just wait until it’s done, even though I might like to just go to bed. Oh, the trouble technology puts us through.
Now you might wonder why I still care so much about my iPod. It’s because so far, the Motorola Milestone hasn’t replaced what I mostly use my iPod for: Media player and little entertainment device. I use the Motorola for taking pictures and videos, using location-based services, updating twitter or simply accessing the internet (and currently checking the last results of the World Cup).
I’ve gotten so used to having access to useful information everywhere all the time that everytime I go abroad (which might include my parents-in-law’s, who live so close to the Swiss border that half of the time I’m there my cell phone mistakenly assumes it’s in Switzerland)… anyway… everytime I go abroad I feel robbed of that information. I have a very basic and unexpensive data plan, mostly because I just wanted a simple data plan which emphasized on the DATA aspect of the whole thing. I use the phone for calls and texting, but mostly I’m interested in all the not phone related activities.
I checked out a couple of options for global roaming today, but none of them catered to my needs. I don’t care for any cheap call rates or free text messages. The only person I’m likely to call is my husband and that’s about once a day at the most. What I miss is the opportunity to use all the helpful little apps that help me get around in Germany so much. Finding a restaurant in London. Checking out the timetables for the train back to Luton. Whatever. What I need when I’m abroad is directions, suggestions for restaurants and activities and information about getting somewhere and probably back.
The options I found for simple data plans for global roaming were still insanely expensive, so it would probably cost me less to just use the options my provider offers anyway. There’s also the option of just getting a SIM from the country you plan to spend some time in, but the last person I knew who tried that was really frustrated by the process so it didn’t seem tempting at all.
Do you all just go de-mobile when you’re abroad? Do you simply not mind about the costs? Or is there a simple trick to stay mobile with your cell phone at a reasonable price? Please enlighten me. This is just s puzzle that… well… leaves me puzzled.