Confessions Of A Berson Mind

This post will be all about cell phones:

Decided to write a post about my MMS issues with the combination of TMobile, my HTC Touch Pro 2, Windows Phone 6.5.x, and Manila (Sense) 2.5.  For every ROM I’ve installed with these settings, I haven’t been able to send picture messages straight away.  Found a fix at: http://thewingster.com/mmsfixm25.aspx — that works great, but I also make a few alterations to ensure success.  Here’s my tutorial.

1.) Flash a clean custom ROM.
2.) Install the fix found on that link immediately after a soft reset. If you wait until after you’ve opened a few text messages or done some other things, you may run into a permissions problem during the install.  Soft reset, then install.
3.) At this point, your picture messages may already work — mine do not.  The next step I undertake is to go to the Messages tab in Manila, and hit the All Messages softkey.  Next, Menu -> Settings -> Options.  In this window, I flick to the bottom, and change the photo resolution to Original, and choose whatever size I like for the camera (currently XGA).  I do this to ensure my photos won’t be sent in micro.
4.) Click done.
5.) Repeat the Menu -> Settings -> Options step, but this time, hit the menu button in this new window, and select MMS Server.  Make sure the SampleMMSC is selected, and click on it (that’s two steps). Here, I change the “Connect via” option to TMobile MMS.  If yours already says this, congratulations.
5a.) I also set the Send limit to 300KB.  One, because I once read that TMobile doesn’t permit messages larger than that (doubt this), and two, because my mobile data is slow enough as is — I don’t need to spend 4 minutes every time I send a pic.  Click Done, and get back to your home screen.
6.) Last tricky step: click the Start Menu -> and Settings. Then Connections -> Connections. In this window, go to the “Advanced” tab, and hit “Select Networks.”  You should see a dropdown that has Tmobile Data already selected — hit the dropdown and select Tmobile MMS. Then, click Edit. In this window, hit the edit softkey, click Next, and change the Access point name to “wap.voicestream.com” (no quotes).  Click Next and then Finish. Click OK and you should be back at the Network Management screen.  BEFORE you leave here, hit the dropdown again, and RESELECT Tmobile Data.
7.) A soft reset isn’t probably necessary, but not a bad idea.

After all these steps, my MMS works great — I send receive no problems, the pictures send and receive at the proper sizes…these steps work for my phone across a multitude of ROMS, and it’s not that tricky.

Hope this helps.

Just a small window into the future:

The two biggest initiatives in the forecast for Berson deal with Security with our online forms, and the “green-ness” of our PCs.  This is only a bump in the blog form, but there will be plenty of information to come forth soon.

So I’m not for mud-slinging really in political campaigns, and I always admire the Candidates who manage to win without saying a negative word about their competitor.  However, this site is just plain interesting:

http://www.grohol.com/computers/dell.htm

Again…just interesting.

Today’s musings relate to the complexities of adding RAM to a system.  I’m currently in the process of upgrading an HP laptop that is in some serious need of RAM (currently only 192 MB).  Ordered some very reliable OCZ RAM from my supplier and eagerly awaited its arrival.  Installation was a breeze, and on Power-up, the computer….powered up — which is always a good thing (computer upgraders will know…when installing RAM, there’s no guarantee that the computer will boot).   Went into Windows, System Properties and….192 MB RAM.  *Sigh*  For all the times that I’ve installed mismatched RAM and had zero problems, it clearly does not mean that you can ALWAYS install RAM of different speeds and get a desired result.  Now I wait for my slower stick of RAM to be delivered.

Also of note, I’m experiencing fantastic gratification by helping support the development of future generations of Mozilla Firefox.  If you peruse their sites, you will find that they Firefox 2.0 Beta for download, which features a new skin, Red X’s on each tab, and several other improvements.  For those with true courage, there is also Mozilla Minefield, or Firefox 3.0a1.  This browser is my current browser of choice just because…it’s bleeding edge.  It currently offers no cool features that I don’t see in 2.0, but…just by running it, and having it crash (very, very frequently), and reporting the information about each crash, I’m helping to support future versions of the browser I hold so dear.  OK, that was a little nerdy to say, but it’s true.   Oh, and for the record, if you want to download 2.0, I fully support you doing so.  You can get it here.  I DO NOT support you getting Minefield unless you are truly, truly, truly capable of dealing with repeated crashes and undesirable results.  If you can … then help the Mozilla team by downloading here…and always, always, always use the Quality Feedback Agent, otherwise your frustrations will not help the team.