What really set me off in search of something “better” than the E9 was Ken Rockwell’s DT880 review wherein he said you need an amp with more than 2 volts RMS to drive these things right. Off I went.

I landed on the Maverick Audio A1.

Runner-up was a Little Dot MKIV for $289 plus about $45 shipping from China. But I found that one after I had ordered the A1 and the A1 seemed a little more appealing to me, so I kept my order.

The A1 arrived last night. The sound is warm but detailed. Incredible bass. It doesn’t seem super spacious, but it’s damned nice and it puts the E9 to shame. I have more to say about the sound.

13 January 2012 update: Amazon emailed saying they have a delivery estimate for my 85mm f/1.8 AF-S: From 3 to 28 February 2012

At first, it was pretty difficult. Not sure why, but at one point I found that the vertical swashplate guide was out of its groove. Perhaps it had been that way all day.

Anyway, I really got the hang of it and totally love it.

• It will become my casual camera of choice (requires awesome photos, great fill flash and instant Camera app startup)
• It will become a bit more of a personal assistant (due to Siri) than my 3G S is. Requires that Siri runs fast enough over my EDGE internet.
• It will be super fast.
• It will be worth the $908 I spent for it.

I’ve been evaluating a Virgin Mobile USA LG Optimus Slider Android 2.3 (that’s Gingerbread) smartphone. Seriously thinking about dumping my iPhone 3G S and prepaid T-Mobile service (1500 minutes/texts + 30MB internet/mo. for $30 + tax) just because I want to have internet anywhere and a decent driving GPS in my phone. But it’s a hard sell, since Android is such a shabby experience overall and the iPhone offers such a refined experience. I will say, however, that this phone has gotten me the closest overall to sticking with Android.

In my case, it’s all about the plan. Unfortunately, I can’t ignore that it’s also about the device.

So today, in desperation, I started searching with Google for something like iphone prepaid plan or some such terms. Then I decided to check out the Virgin Mobile MiFi 2200. I found one on Amazon for $69 and ordered it immediately. Their current best plan for me is $20/mo. for 500MB. I dig it. I currently use up my 30MB of T-Mobile data about three days before my account renews for the month. This has happened two or three times now (not consecutively).

Somehow my Virgin Mobile MiFi 2200 search landed me on TruConnect.com. What a surprise. They offer nothing for $4.99/mo. but 3.9 cents per MB. I did the math. For me to reach 500MB, it’s cost me about $25 and that’s including the $4.99 monthly fee. I’m so in. I canceled my Virgin Mobile MiFi Amazon order and ordered the same device from TruConnect for $10 more, $79.99.

I cant wait to see if it’s any good.

Friday, 9 December 2011update: The MiFi 2200 arrived last night in the mail. Ooh. I set it up this morning at the office. I installed some SpeedTest app on my iPHone 3G S and it said I’m getting:

Download Max: 10,642kbit/s

Download Avg: 10,642kbit/s

Upload Max: 810kbit/s

Upload Avg: 803kbit/s

That’s 1.33 megabytes/s upload. I can live with that for this price. Hopefully, I’ll see speeds like that elsewhere and that I won’t get spoiled and want more speed.

I really should wait for a phone with Android 4.0, from some review I saw mentioned on DaringFireball.net, but I’ll give this  a go today due to the fire sale.

The wife will try one as well, to replace her beloved Blackberry Curve. We’ll see how it goes.

What I expect to miss going from unlocked iPhone 3G S on T-Mobile prepaid to LG Optimus Slider on Virgin Mobile USA

Instapaper. But I think I’ll be okay with Instapaper on Kindle 3, iPad and MacBook Air.

A hard mute switch, for when I get to and leave the office, quiet environments, at bed time, etc.

Apple’s beautiful new iOS 5 notification system, which they ripped part of off from Android but did so much better.

I’m wondering

If the Android calendar app will suck

If the Android contacts/address book app will suck

If the Android 2.3 Gmail or built-in Mail app will be better than what I’ve seen in 2.2 and earlier versions of Android.

If the Android 2.3 on-screen keypad will be better than that from 2.2.

If the Android Twitter client will be any good

If there are any better Simplenote clients since I last tried Android for myself

I’m hoping that

I can set up Google Talk to transcribe my voicemails

There will be a decent SSH client for Android

Android 2.3′s text autocorrect will be awesome

Tasker will be awesome

There will be a good dictionary with derivations.

There will be a decent way to get music onto this thing.

It’ll be easy to find songs in the car so I can play what my daugther asks for from time to time

What I won’t miss

Inability to forward voicemail to GoogleVoice so they can transcribe my messages

Upgrade bullshit (waiting, long upgrade process) since I have to unlock my iPhone to use it on T-Mobile

Things. It’s a great todo list app which I own for iPhone, iPad and OS X, all purchased separately. Last time I went back to iPhone from Android, Things was part of the reason. But these days I don’t use Things at all. I use Simplenote for my todo lists. I haven’t opened Things (or OmniFocus) on any of my devices in months. Haven’t even thought about them recently, until today.

12 December 2011 update: I ordered an iPhone 4S (factory unlocked) late last week. I’m sending this phone back. It came the closest of any Android phone (considered along with the service and price thereof) of being something I could stick with. But Android 2.3 sucks hard in my view and I don’t want to deal with it. I want the excellent experience of an iPhone.

The only drawback of sticking with prepaid T-Mobile and an iPhone are no ability to forward my voicemail to Google Voice (bummer) and limited internet (30MB/mo.) The internet thing is mitigated by my TruConnect MiFi 2200 $4.99/mo + $0.039/MB mobile hotspot data plan.

I played with it a bit at night after work.

First big complaint: The Kindle Fire doesn’t get loud enough. I was watching Ip Man via Amazon Prime on it and I couldn’t get the volume high enough. Same was true watching a couple YouTube videos about RC helicopters, which are plenty loud enough on my MacBook Air and iPad 2. This is a big problem. I didn’t point it out to my wife.

Also, I really miss having a physical home button.

I also miss having physical volume buttons. How the hell do you change the volume while playing Angry Birds? (My wife was playing, I don’t find Angry Birds very interesting to play for more than about a minute a month.) This volume thing sucks.

Web browsing is okay. Even my wife remarked that page loads are disappointingly slow. I’d seen a video comparing iPad to Fire page loading yesterday and the Kindle loaded pages in 14 seconds that the iPad 2 loaded in 4, so I was prepared for slow page loads. Hopefully this is just a DNS thing and I’ll be able to change the Fire over to using Google DNS without screwing with any of the Silk browser’s cloud-based web browsing acceleration magic. We’ll see.

The list of huge (pretty) icons of the last-used apps and such is annoying in that you can’t delete items from first position — you have to push them down in the deck by running other apps. I opened the pre-installed Pulse app to see what it was. I don’t remember what it was now, the morning after, but I do remember that I wanted that stupid thing out of my face.

Address Book: What does this sync to? I want to sync my address book to my wife’s Google Contacts so they in sync with her Blackberry. How do I do this? Is this possible at all with the Kindle Fire?

What’s Good

The price. $200 makes up for a lot of disappointment.

The Kindle Fire’s size is nice for one-handed holding. Nice for watching a movie while holding our five week old daughter. I like that. Though I couldn’t hear the videos I wanted to watch, which was a shame.

28 November 2011 update: Fire still sucks. But wife wants to keep it, even though she agrees that it’s pretty bad.