Scratch that…WinPhone users get the coolest device of them all…Google’s Android OS makes a good showing though…

Flash (superthin Android bar phone, 3.5″ screen)
Smoke (Pixi-like Android bar phone, 2.8″ screen)
Thunder (Android bar phone, 4.1″ screen)
Lightning (Windows Phone 7 vertical slider, 4.1″ screen)

The Lightning and Smoke are unique form-factor-wise for phones of their caliber…definitely not enough to get me to change carriers from my beloved Sprint but if the Lightning showed up with WiMAX and Android it would be a very serious contender to the HTC Evo 4G, set to launch this summer.

However the silence must be broken to note a rather rocking web application: Schedule Miner.

Made by one of Mines’s own, a freshman-plus-a-ridiculous-amount-of-transfer-credit in the Computer Science program, the web app takes the Boring, rather difficult to use Trailhead course scheduling system and condenses its information into a clean, fast, easy-to-use course discovery and selection engine.

For example here’s part of my schedule for next semester, though it doesn’t include the online-only Web Programming course that brings my credit hour load to a whopping 15 (gotta love graduation semester).

On addition to creating good-looking schedules, the site allows drilling down by department, instructor and even classroom building, if you want to pick an NHV seminar section close to the (more difficult) class you have afterward. The professor page even shows the prof’s weekly teaching schedule; apparently Roman Tankelevich teaches two back-to-back morning classes (mine being one of them), then takes an hour break, then teaches one more, on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule.

The tool doesn’t integrate with Banner/Trailhead, so you can’t register for your courses directly. However it does spit out CRN numbers, which are the next best thing; input the numbers into the registration screen and you’re now in those classes, provided they’re not full or otherwise closed.

Only time will tell whether the upcoming Trailhead refresh and Banner upgrade will render Schedule Miner useless when next semester rolls around. However it’s a great resource for anyone making last-minute schedules before registering this semester…and that’s always a good thing.

Or if you would rather back your stuff up with an ISP-branded solution than Mozy, Qwest offers that too.

Below is a rather exhaustive bunch of photos describing every piece of the pack. Sorry about the photo quality…apparently my twelve-megapixel camera does horribly in low light. If anyone wants me to reshoot a picture or two, that’s no problem Click on any picture for the full, huge, 12-megapixel version.

The box is colorful but nothing out of the ordinary. No, you can't know where I live without asking me first.

Here's what the box looked like when I first opened it. That's my bed by the way, in case you were wondering.

This is all of the smaller stuff in the package, as I got it, plastic wrap (iff applicable) intact.

The white thing at left is the rather large Windows 7 poster. The colorful thing on the right is, as it turns out, party bags.

More after the break…

Here's the poster. To give you an idea of the scale, its length is nearly the width of my twin-sized bed.

Here's the poster, horizontally.

Here are all the various promo fliers that came in the package. Ten each. This picture shows all possible sides of the promo cards (front, back and inside for the Corel one).

Same thing, but with flash. Maybe this one's more readable if you want to read exactly what the fliers say.

As I said, there were ten of each item. Ten Windows 7 promo cards, ten Corel cards...

...ten Norton promo cards, ten Kaspersky proo cards, ten Zune promo cards...

So here you've got balloons (three red, FOUR yellow, three blue, three green), some balloon tie thingies (?) and ten Nero cards. Yes, some are upside-down; it's not just you.

Here you have ten psychadelic-looking Windows 7 party favor bags. Hey, at least they're roomy enough to be used s a grocery bag...oh wait, nobody would do that. Or would they?

Three jokers, poker rules and larger-than-usual graphics. Otherwise the deck of cards isn't out of the ordinary (Steve Ballmer is NOT the ace of spades or the king of hearts).

The front of the card box is semi-glossy, as you can see by the reflection of my camera in the picture. Also, the backs of the playing cards are just as crazy as the design on the handbags. And, if you so choose, on your Windows 7 desktop.

Unfortunately, this shot is too also too blurry to read the poker sheet (cool idea, not unique to this since it's just a Bicycle deck). The back of the card box has the same back-of-card image on it. The 64-bit CD has "GENUINE" and "Microsoft" holographics on it. Steve Ballmer's signature is slightly embossed, but definitely just a copy.

You know the X-shaped foldy thingies you have on restaurant tables? That's what is at the top of this picture. The next picture shows the opposite side of the right card. The left card is the same on both sides.

This picture doesn't show it, ut both of the items shown (not the newspaper) are on the glossy side. That's the back of the Windows 7 Signature Edition package by the way.

Centerpiece. That's what you call that thing. Anyway, here it is assembled, with the 64-bit Windows 7 install disc.

Here are the two Windows 7 discs side-by-side. 32-bit was/is in the Signature Edition holder. As if the disc actually mattered...I'm betting Windows 7 will be ofered for download when it comes out.

Here's what it looks like inside the Windows 7 Ultimate Signature Edition DVD holder. The photo was taken from my desk, about three inches away from my iMac, which will get a copy of Win7 installed soon enough. No, you can't have my key.

As others have pointed out, there isn’t a ton of branding on the party pack, though there’s a decent amount. The cards are a nice touch, as is the simple DVD holder, which is a welcome change from the Windows Vista Ultimate Edition box I bought two and a half years ago.

If you’re in the Golden area, drop me a line (ilittman@mymail) if you want to come to the party, though I’ll probably run out of swag to give away. Also, if you have any questions or comments, that’s what the comments section is for!

One big use of MultiPass is for the Mines VPN, used for accessing on-campus resources from off-campus. Geekier folks will choose to just SSH into imagine.mines.edu with their username and multipass password, however if you want to route your internet traffic through the Mines campus the VPN, available at secure.mines.edu, is the way to go.

One cool thing about the latest VPN update, which also improves compatibility with next-generation operating systems like Snow Leopard and 64-bit versions of Windows, is that you can now log into the VPN from on-campus. If you’re wondering why you would ever want to do such a thing, note that the Mines wireless networks (CSMWireless, ResNetWireless, etc.) are unsecured, so normally any data sent over a wireless link is up for grabs for anyone with the right software.

Of course, banks and online stores have SSL webpages to keep traffic secure, however if you want to get the equivalent of running your computer on a secured wireless network (and then some) just log into the VPN. In my experience your speeds won’t suffer on a reasonably modern machine (the ailing Mines wireless network is the bottleneck these days) and you can rest assured that the weakest link of the SSL tunneled connection is your MultiPass.

The crux of this week’s ‘cast: GSM, the voice and data standard used the world over for mobile phones, is hopelessly flawed in a security sense and can be cracked in several different ways. The cost for the correct apparatus to crack the encryption: just a few thousand dollars. The expertise required: minimal. Read for yourself. Or here.

Granted, you probably won’t get your conversations spied upon, unless some enterprising Mines student with a wad of cash has nothing better to do and your T-Mobile or AT&T phone is not running in 3G mode at the time (though the latter can be forced). Still, it’s best not to have sensitive conversations over your non-3G phone (which includes the first-generation iPhone) if that non-3G phone is running off of AT&T or T-Mobile.

Of course, you need a beefy backbone when you’re running the third-largest DSL provider in the US, and when said DSL provider ust launched VDSL2 tiers to compete with cable providers’ DOCSIS 3 rollouts. There are rumblings that Qwest in some areas hasn’t allowed customers to purchase more than 12 Mbps down and 896 kbps up on their VDSL2 service even for people chose enough to the remote terminal to get more, due to lack of bandwidth availability. Then again, this is more likely due to the back of “middle mile” connectivity between Qwest remotes and the backbone; the speed limitation seems to suggest that the affected boxes are fed with copper T3s (45 megabits each way) rather than 100-megabit-plus fiber.

It will be interesting to see what happens to Qwest’s offerings, particularly on the high-end side, due to this backbone upgrade. It might mean cheaper bandwidth to large Qwest customers (like the FRGP, of which Mines is a member) or it might just mean that Qwest will be at 20% network utilization rather than 70%. The backbone upgrade probably won’t make the difference between getting faster DSL service in any given location at any point in time, but who knows?

If you want to hear my call, it’s at about 16:07 (minutes:seconds) into the video, a bit earlier in the audio. My question was simply whether Qwest, with their new VDSL2 technology, was able to reach as far as the last-generation (ADSL2+) technology. Or, put another way, would this next-gen technology mean that less people would get internet above 7 Mbps than if Qwest had just stuck with ADSL2+. The answer: VDSL2, on newer equipment, will fall back to ADSL2+ on longer loop (wire) lengths. Fun stuff.

UPDATE 2: According to other Denver-area folks, the DOCSIS 3 upgrade does not require a truck roll, as I suspected. Just go to your local Comcast store (the closest one to Golden is in Wheat Ridge, 11501 W 44th Ave), make the upgrade and pick up a modem if you want to rent one.

UPDATE: Apparently DOCSIS 3.0 in Golden went mere hours ago (this morning, to be exact). So if Comcast representatives don’t seem to know what they’re talking about yet, try to forgive them; the northern part of the Denver metro doesn’t even have DOCSIS 3 turned on yet. Some places aren’t even on DOCSIS 2.

Also, if you want to get a Motorola SurfBoard 6120 modem to take advantage of DOCSIS 3 speeds (or channel-bonding PowerBoost, which from what I hear works even on lower tiers) they can be had at Amazon for about $93. On the flip side, that’s 29 months worth of modem rental fees, and prices will go down for the modems as time goes on. On the other hand, if you plan on sticking with a non-DOCSIS 3.0 Comcast tier, looking around for a cheap modem could put you out ahead of rental fee costs in under a year.

Finally, for those wondering where Qwest’s service falls in relation to Comcast’s in terms of speed, Comcast trumps both Qwest tiers available here unless you guy the Economy tier on Comcast. On the other hand, Qwest costs less than Comcast when not on promotion…

ORIGINAL POST

Sometime in the past couple of days, Comcast has gone live with their DOCSIS 3.0 service in the Denver area, just in time for school. Below are current speed tiers and prices based on what I was able to gather from a Comcast rep online. The two highest-end tiers require a new channel-bonding DOCSIS 3.0 modem like the Motorola SurfBoard 6120 (or you can get whatever Comcast has in stock, which might be a Cisco model instead). According to the representative, upgrades to a DOCSIS 3.0 tier will require a $99 installation charge, though I believe have confirmed this information to be incorrect. New internet installations on the other hand do require this fee if you don’t already have cable TV with the company.

The prices below reflect internet-only service without promotions. If you want to rent a modem from Comcast, add $3 + tax ($3.22 or so) to the monthly price. If you’re on a promotion or are bundling Comcast service with something else, prices will be less. There’s no contract on any of Comcast’s services unless you are buying a “triple play” bundle and don’t want your second-year price to skyrocket. All tiers have Comcast’s 250GB “soft cap”; usage above the cap will get you a warning, then a disconnection for one year. Comcast also has traffic management software in place to throttle down heavy users during peak periods, however the protocol is relatively benign.

1. Economy – 1 Mbps down / 384 Kbps up – $34.95
   No PowerBoost, not heavily advertised
2. Performance – 12 Mbps down / 2 Mbps up – $54.95
   PowerBoost, probably the best value for your money, default tier
3. Blast! – 16 Mbps down / 2 Mbps up – $64.95
   PowerBoost, highest-speed non-DOCSIS 3.0 tier
4. Ultra – 22 Mbps down / 5 Mbps up – $74.95
   DOCSIS 3.0, PowerBoost, best tier for power users in my opinion
5. Extreme – 50 Mbps down / 10 Mbps up – $116.95
   DOCSIS 3.0, no PowerBoost, fastest tier, faster downloads than Qwest VDSL2

If you’re wondering whether Ultra could conceivably outpace Extreme while PowerBoost is active, the answer is a resounding “yes.” In fact, in most cases the Performance tier can match or exceed Ultra’s “regular” speeds while on PowerBoost; due to DOCSIS 2.0-sized upload channels (a must-have for DOCSIS 3) PowerBoosted upload speeds for every tier but Economy will many times reach 9, 10 or even 11 Mbps. That said, for longer downloads and uploads PowerBoost will wear off and you’ll get the speeds you pay for.

One final note: promotions are easy to get; just ask for them. I’m locked in for six months at a rate roughly $23 below Comcast’s regular structure simply because I walked into the omcast store and hinted at downgrading due to my then-$65 internet bill. That said, I had been paying full price for a few months prior to the office visit, and I’ve now been using the company’s internet service for a year or so.

1. Don’t buy Vista. Wait for Windows 7 to come out. Meanwhile, grab the Windows 7 Release Client. It’ll be available for download until the 20th, at which point I’ll put up a non-Microsoft link here (it’s legal; they’ll still give you a key directly, until Windows 7′s actual release).
2. Get an upgrade or OEM edition. On Vista, installing an upgrade edition of Vista twice (once without a key, then once with one over the first install) gave you a working copy of Windows at a significantly lower cost than a full edition of the software. There’s no reason why it won’t work that way with Windows 7. Or you can grab an OEM edition when they become available. If you’re looking for a place to buy Windows, I prefer Newegg.
3. You don’t need ultimate. Windows 7 Home Premium is great for 95% of folks. Windows 7 Professional takes that operating system and builds on it, satisfying another 4.9%. Translation: you don’t need to shell out for an expensive Windows 7 Ultimate copy.
4. Buy Office with The Ultimate Steal. Microsoft has a special promotion for college students (read: potential pirates if the price isn’t low enough). With the promotion, Office 2007 is just $59.95. It’s worth every penny at that price. Microsoft also offers Windows Vista Ultimate at a discount, but there’s no reason to waste money on Vista this late in the game.
5. Use VirtualBox if you don’t want to reboot. It’s a fast and free alternative to using Windows under Parallels or VMWare Fusion, and there’s no rebooting required. One hangup: Microsoft’s activation system may not like running two copies of Windows 7 (one virtualized, one real), even though they’re on the same system. There are ways to get around this is the problem comes up, but they’re, uh, not exactly legal.

Bottom line: with less than $200 ($60-ish for Office, $120 for Windows 7) you don’t have to use the computer labs to do Windows-centric work (trust me, it’ll happen if you stick around Mines long enough).