Life on the Road – Trucking News Blog

Cough cough cough ach pwew cough cough wheeze bark bark whooop cough – damn so sorry – I’m back inside the truck. I just turned the engine off and the APU just came on – the smoke from that thing-  ahch cough cough ahoo pwew is worse than if the engine was on. Diane Sontag is so right. And the two trucks opposite of me that don’t have APU’s – OMG – they’re idling and the soot and stench is seeping into my cab. Where the hell is my inhaler? I know I put my saline spray somewhere. Ahhhpwew – gesundheit! I breathed easier when we all just idled our CAT’s.

Ok – this is going to be as kind of summary trucker techno update. I’ll go into more detail about specific products in future posts. First and most importantly, the Blackberry is gone. It was the worst cell phone I ever had. I would never buy another nor recommend one to another driver. I also will NEVER buy another electronic device with a track ball. I remember so wanting a Blackberry,  finally be able to afford one, and after a few months couldn’t wait to toss it. Unfortunately the phone I wanted, the iPhone is still not available through Verizon. Rumor has it that they will offer a 3G version sometime between September and Christmas.

What I replaced it with is the most remarkable device I have ever laid my chubby trucker hands on. Where I go, it goes. And yes, I sleep with it. I’m talking about the HTC Droid Eris. I like it so much I might just forget about the iPhone. I’ll spend more time raving about it in, as I said, future posts. Let’s keep moving. My old 15″ Inspiron Dell laptop is also gone with the wind. I was going to replace it with a Toshiba 17″ inch, but ordered and just took delivery of a very efficient and lightning fast Dell Inspiron MINI 10″. It’s as thin as my cell phone, has a Intel Atom processor and runs Windows 7. It is without a doubt the best computer I have ever owned. Thanks Chris. Anything Mac/Apple is just too expensive for this truck driver. The iPad is interesting, but I have no use for it and it is $200 more expensive than my new Dell. The only way I could afford a new laptop is because QVC offered it under their “easy pay” feature – that’s 5 payments with no interest.

By the way, I do have Twitter and Facebook, but I just don’t have the time to do anything with them. Last month was the first time in a long while that I drove more than 10,000 miles, and that obviously is my priority. There is little time left for sending and answering e-mail and blogging. The last thing I want to mention is the Cobra CBTH1 Bluetooth headset. Now in the interest of full disclosure this headset was sent to me from Cobra for evaluation. No BS, don’t waste your time, if your need is a Bluetooth headset with any other manufacturer or model – just buy the damn Cobra. It’s a no brainer and my wife hasn’t complained once about not being able to hear me and visa versa. I dropped it in the snow at a job site. I thought I lost it. I didn’t, dryed it out and it worked fine. If this thing was a piece of crap, trust me, I would tell you so. More details later. The HTC Droid Eris and the Cobra headset are the perfect combination. I’m still waiting for Cobra to send me their” trucker” GPS to try out and review. There are certainly plenty of them sitting unsold in the cases at T/A for $399. In the meantime I’m happy with my old Invion unit.