Accessing Citrix "ICA" for Mountain Lion - Citrix Receiver, not Citrix PlugIn or Citrix Access Gateway

This is a narrow-interest post, but if you are affected I can all but guarantee you will appreciate it.

Many hospitals and healthcare delivery systems using Epic provide physicians with remote access to the Epic EHR. HealthPartners in MN, where my wife works does this.

The HealthPartners site recommends installation of "Citrix ICA Client" for Windows. It doesn't say what to do for a Mac. We've used the "Citrix Online Plugin" for Snow Leopard for years, but it's no longer supported. We uninstalled it.

So what should one do? Should one install, for example, the beta version of Citrix Access Gateway with 10.8 support? 

Briefly - no. Download and install Citrix - Receiver for Mac 11.6 or later. Citrix has an abysmal web site, but it appears that the 'Access Gateway' product is largely obsolete. Receiver is a supported product and it worked with the HealthPartner's Citrix gateway.

It works, but that doesn't mean it's quality software. The installation failed from a User account, even after granting Admin rights. I had to uninstall and reinstall from an Admin account. (It's also possible that there were bits of old Citrix app remaining and the uninstaller cleaned them up -- but I'd unstable previously.)

Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion - experience and bugs

After about a year of preparation, and six months of running Mountain Lion on my relatively new 11" Air, I upgraded my @2009 27" iMac from Snowie to ML.

 

I'll add to this post as I get more experience with the transition. For now, I'll list some early impressions, some bugs and what I did to transition.

 

Impressions

• I've had worse upgrades, and I'm glad I was able to skip Lion -- the closest Apple has come to a Vista-class OS X debacle.
• Mission Control and Full Screen are made for my 11" Air, but they're a bit awkward on my iMac. I might change my old and unloved "Magic Mouse" to Apple's Magic Pad. A lifehacker article helped with changes to Spaces, but this tip in comments is key: "You can assign applications to a space without any addons. Just right click on the item in the dock, and do Options > Assign To > This Desktop". Not all apps have this ML-specific feature; Aperture does but iTunes doesn't. [Turns out this is a bug, iTunes should have the option. See below.]

Preparation

• Ran Mountain Lion on a secondary machine for a few months. So I know I can adjust to the mouse direction inversion.
• Upgraded or abandoned a number of apps based on experiences with the Air prior to transition. FileMaker Pro and VMWare Fusion of course, but I looked at all the apps I use and either removed or upgraded them. Brought everything from App Store up to date that could run on Snow Leopard. Removed Rosetta apps (obsolete games for kids mostly). Removed Spanning Sync (no longer useful).
• Uninstalled all PreferencePanes.
• I should have removed all Login Items but forgot, created minor issues (below).
• Disk Utility Verify Disk.
• Uninstalled Citrix apps, my wife relies on that. I have a somewhat ML compatible version I'll install soon.
• Uninstalled Magic Prefs, an app I've used to make the Magic Mouse somewhat tolerable
• Attempted iCloud migration, that was a fiasco. I'm getting ready to retry with teeth firmly gritted.

Upgrade issues and bugs

• Ran into a known bug with Login Items (see below) - esp. “SpeechSynthesisServer.app".
• I had multiple failures with downloading Mountain Lion and a known bug with App Store "unknown error occurred" messages. (See below).
• I was unable to save the Mountain Lion installer. (below)
• When opened in it's Snow Leopard 'space-2' the iTunes Doc context menu was missing its 'Assign To' options. They were shown in other Spaces. I had to use those options in another Space to restore the menu in all Spaces. Looks like a bug with converting SL space-assignment prefs.

Known Login Item bug

 

This bug has hit a few people going from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion. Details below from an Apple Discussion thread I contributed to: 

The document...: Apple Support Communities

… The document SpeechSynthesisServer.app could not be opened because it is damaged or incomplete….

… I think this bug may hit people whose user accounts have gone through a few versions of OS X AND are going directly from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion. In my case my user account started out with 10.2 - so it's picked up some cruft.

There are several items in my non-admin user Preferences:Users and Groups:User:Login Items that are not in my Admin account user including an item called SpeechSynthesisServer. It had a yellow warning triangle next to it and the data type was unrecognized.

I removed it from Login Items, logged out, logged in, and the bug was gone. The LoginIn item is referencing a system app, that app is still present post upgrade: /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A /Frameworks/SpeechSynthesis.framework/Versions/A.

I suspect the app is still important. DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING IN SYSTEM/LIBRARY. Just leave it alone iTunesHelper was also on the one user's LoginItems and I removed it.

I think there are a couple of bugs with the Login Item migration from SL to ML. For example, a disk image I mounted showed with a yellow icon too. I removed it, added it back in, and it was fine.

The known App Store "unknown error" bug and a probably App Store download bug

I was unable to successfully download the Mountain Lion Install from the App Store; two attempts failed with an App Stoer error message "An Unknown Error Occurred". I'd saved a copy from upgrading my Air, so I had to use that. During this process I ran into a bug with App Store error messages. I think there are two bugs here:

• If the "an unknown error occurred" error appears after a failed App Store download, it will prevent future downloads. The fix is to use App store menu item for logging into your account and click the button to reset app store warnings.
• I wonder if under some conditions a failed download can get "stuck" and block future downloads. I haven't yet down this, but I wonder if cleaning App Store caches would help [1].

Problem with saving the Mountain Lion Installer

 

i'm not sure if this is a bug or a change Apple made recently.

 

When I upgraded my Air from Lion to Mountain Lion from an Admin account the installers were initial saved to the Applications folder. If I quit the install procedure I could save it, then run install (original is deleted).

 

When I upgraded this iMac, starting from a User account I tried the same thing - quite the Installer. This time, however, it was not in Applications. After this my subsequent downloads failed with an "Unknown Error". So either Apple has changed procedures or there's a bug here. Probably both.

[1] from Apple Discussions, C Samit

… try deleting the cache, cookies, and preferences associated with the App Store. Quit the App Store if it's open. Now open the Finder. From the Finder menu bar click Go > Go to Folder Type or copy/paste: ~/LIbrary/Caches/com.apple.appstore Click Go then move the Cache.db file from the com.apple.appstore folder to the Trash. Type or copy/paste: ~/Library/Cookies Click Go then move the com.apple.appstore.plist file from the Cookies folder to the Trash. Type or copy/paste: ~/Library/Preferences Click Go then move the com.apple.appstore.plist file from the Preferences folder to the Trash.

Update:

After installing Mountain Lion I tried the App store download -- again using my User account. Again I canceled and it did not appear in my Applications folder. So either Apple has changed the download, or the trick for getting a local copy of ML only works for Admin accounts. This could be a permissions issue.

Also, I had to restart Google Earth so it would add its Login Item back.

Lastly, like all updates this one forces Spotlight to reindex. The combination of Time Machine/Capsule backup and Spotlight reindexing brings my system to a standstill. I recommend letting Spotlight finish before reenabling Time Machine.

Update 2: A major regression with Slideshows.

Mountain Lion includes many new slideshows, but only the "classic" supports dual monitors by showing different images on both displays. The new shows show the same image on multiple displays. That's bad enough, but Slideshow no longer supports nested folders (!). That's really stupid.

Updates

• Auto-correct is annoying and buggy - it causes my cursor to periodically vanish. I disabled it and I disabled auto-character substitution. i think this was causing Citrix issues. Needs to be disabled for every user.
• Spotlight activity can lockout user interaction. I've seen this in Lion too. This is bad enough to qualify as a bug.
• Sceensaver/slideshow CPU use is ridiculous. An app.net correspondent suggested they were embedding Rosetta to run PowerPC code. Seems plausible.
• So far Mountain Lion is substantially slower than Snow Leopard for many of the things I do on my 2009 machine. It's not intolerable, but I would have liked more optimizations.
• Apple has not updated the Airport Express 5.6 installer to run on Mountain Lion, it's needed to configure older devices. This is a sh*t. I used Pacifist to install the app and configure the old express I use to for music.
• Front Row is gone. I didn't notice this since I didn't use it. Still, disappointing for many.
• Many users report power issues with Snow Leopard laptops.
• It is exceedingly annoying that Save dialogs default to iCloud.
• RSS support is gone from Mail.app. I expected that and didn't use Mail RSS, but an issue for some.
• You can turn off horizontal scrolling on the Magic Mouse. Almost worth the update by itself. Two finger double tap for Mission Control is essential. Mountain Lion makes my old Magic Mouse tolerable.
• Microsoft Remote Desktop Client is not officially supported in Lion or ML (must be end-of-life)
• I thought ML was doing better than SL as a print server, but then my Brother HL-2140 printer stopped working. A search turned up a range of printer dysfunctions in ML. Truly, the CUPS experiment was a failure.

Excel 2007 and 2010 can save multicolumn sort order criteria - but only for tables

The sort order amnesia of Excel 2007 was one of the odder regressions in the history of Microsoft Office. After decades of remembering the last set of sort criteria, Excel forgot them.

Sometimes, if you had a data range with headers and no gaps, and if you clicked on a header in the table, the sort order seemed to stay with the header.

Maybe.

Apparently this is true for Excel 2010. Microsoft documents this (emphases mine):

Sort criteria are saved with the workbook so that you can reapply the sort each time that you open the workbook for an Excel table, but not for a range of cells. If you want to save sort criteria so that you can periodically reapply a sort when you open a workbook, then it's a good idea to use a table. This is especially important for multicolumn sorts or for sorts that take a long time to create.

Tables are more special in 2007 than in prior versions of Excel. I found a description of how to do this in an otherwise obscure forum (maybe a splog?) by dFrank:

Why Excel 2007 doesn't save ... Data -> Sort ... settings?: 

It is amazing, but why such a simple question take ages to resolve? 

Why Microsoft didn't put a huge warning label that SORT ORDER in EXCEL 2007 is now behaves completely different from previous versions. 

For years now, I was under impression that is it just a bug, and nothing can be done about it. 

Finally, some super-small font on some supper-obscure web site whispers that you only can save sort on a table, but on on a range. 

What the h*** is a table. A table is LIST in previous Excel versions. Never heard of it. But we do not need to know about this. Let's just go thorgh the steps:
-01- Select a range of cells just a bunch of columns and convert it to table (Ctrl T);
-02- Remove annoying unneeded table formatting (Design --> Table Style --> Clear);
-03- Remove filters (Data - Filter);
-04- Apply a sort. 

Next time you are in the file, your sort is finally preserved.

In my limited testing I don't think you need to remove data filters, they are compatible with tables.

Crashy apps on iOS 6?

Several of my long used 3rd party productivity apps are less stable on iOS 6.01/iPhone 5 than they were on iOS 5/iPhone 4S. I've note seen this mentioned elsewhere, so perhaps it's a coincidental problem in several of the apps I use.

The apps are still usable, it's primarily an annoyance. I'm restarting the phone more frequently to see if that helps.

Sharing for what it's worth. I also asked on app.net.

iPhone 4S to iPhone 5 - upgrade experience with corporate Exchange security settings

I bought an iPhone 5 because I was out of contract, but for work reasons a cheap iPhone pay-go plan wasn't an option. That meant all of my fees were going to AT&T, instead of paying off half a new phone. On the other hand, if I bought a $700+ contract phone for $300 down then my 4S could go to my daughter and spare me the cost of an iPod Touch while serving as a reserve phone in case I lose the 5.

 

So I got the standard white 32GB. Very soon I'll get a 2nd cable then wait for the 3rd party adapters to arrive, pick up a cheap case and look for a good one in a month or two.

 

This post isn't about that however, and it's not about how light and thin it is, or the silly address book that can't be searched by source, or the over-saturated Calendar colors, or the cable, or the maps, or the Podcast app from Hell. it's about how the upgrade works when you go from one corporate Exchange Server authenticated device to a new one.

 

The corporate authentication process changes the way the phone works and it may make a backup/restore trickier. Among other things that are mandated (I can't change):

• The phone will wipe with 10 pw errors
• It auto-locks at 5 minutes (so many bicycling apps don't work well any more)
• Mandatory 6 digit passcode.

To add an extra annoyance, post phone update I have to wait a few days for the company to reauthenticate the new device. I can't complain though, they pay much of my bill.

 

I picked up the phone at the AT&T store so I wouldn't have to worry about home delivery; they activated it at 6.0 and I started the corporate account process. That locked down the phone, which is perhaps why the next step didn't work.

 

After I updated the 5 to 6.01 (among other bugs, 6.0 messes up some Outlook appointments) it showed in iTunes as 'iPhone'. Then I attempted a restore from my 4S -- but it stopped at a partial restore.

 

So I wiped it completely then tried again. Since my 4S backup was encrypted I expected it to store and restore my credentials. It worked with some quirks.

 

The restore had two phases. In Phase I it requested my iCloud account credentials (not same as my store credentials) and I had to set a "secure" 6 digit PIN. Then the phone restarted and went into Phase II, restoring about 150 apps, etc. This took about 2 hours.

 

The restore went pretty well, except for Reeder.app! As usual I had to reenter all my credentials. I think this is a Reeder.app bug, no matter what I do I seem to always have to start over. I also had to redo Google's barely functional and almost forgotten multi-calendar ActiveSync configuration via http://m.google.com/sync (from iPhone) but I expected that. It hasn't been updated in years, and it's awkward and all-bug-forgotten, but it still works. That meant I had to do my calendar color assignments too; fortunately I wrote down the rules I use to assign colors across the 13 calendars I currently sync.

 

It could have been worse.

 

PS. In my haste I swapped digits when I set my new passcode (twice). I got through 6 of my 10 tries before I made a wild-guess at what I did wrong and got in. I almost had to wipe the phone and start over again. Be careful!

Supporting old iPhones: Keep a local copy of older apps

It's not hard to keep an old computer running well -- just don't update. 

That's harder to do for old iPhones, especially for a family where every phone syncs with one instance of iTunes (and thus all share apps, movies and the like). If I accept all updates I find that perfectly good apps no longer work on old phones -- even the still Apple supported 3GS.

So I've copied all 1.7GB of apps from iTunes Music\Mobile Applications to a local store. When a valued app stops working on an old phone, I can delete the update and restore the older version. Going forward I'll accept the updates, and if something breaks I'll evaluate a reversion.

I wonder how this works for users who sync to the Cloud.

Retrospect Professional for Windows 7.7 bug: recreate backup set workaround

Dantz barely sells Retrospect: for Windows, and the version I use (EMC) is obsolete, so this bug workaround will probably go unused. Still, if you're the one desperate person ...

The normal function for recreating a Backup Set Catalog File (essential!) is broken. After clicking Recreate "to build a replacement Catalog File from the Backup Set's media" and choosing File Backup Set medium you get the open catalog dialog. Which, of course, does not exist.

The workaround is to choose Tools:Repair Catalog then select Recreate from disks (even though you are recreating from Files, which in Retrospect is not the same as Disks) then All Disks then navigate to the folder holding your backup files. It will take a very long time, but it will recreate a catalog.

Brother printer: check drum life before ordering new printer cartridge

I've ordered 3 printer cartridges since I bought my Brother 2140 a bit over two years ago [2]. Yes, we still print. It's a kid thing. The toner light is on again [5], so I'm toner shopping.

I don't mind buying them, the printer is reasonably economical and, ever since I set it up with an Airport Express print server rather than using my Snow Leopard iMac it's been trouble free. the cartridges aren't cheap though, a new cartridge is a good fraction of the price a new printer with its low capacity "starter" cartridge. [1] So I like to check the drum life first.

I thought I could do that through Printer Setup or CUPS (http://localhost:631/admin/?ADVANCEDSETTINGS=YES) interface, but I couldn't get it to work. This did:

How Do I Run a Self Test on a Brother HL-5240 Printer? | eHow.com

You can print a 'Printer Settings' page by pressing the 'Go' button on the front of the printer three times within 2 seconds. This page will provide information about the printer, such as its' media access control (MAC) address."

From the Printer Settings page I see I've printed 10,152 pages and I'm on my "fourth" (third really, first was tiny [4]) toner cartridge and the drum has 13% remaining life. That suggests a low cost printer drum is good for about four cartridge replacements. The current alternative is the Brother HL-2270DW or HL-2240D; they use the TN-450 printer cartridge; my current printer uses the TN360.

I bet I can get one more cartridge out of the drug, so this time I'll get the high yield cartridge [4]. After this cartridge is done, I'll get a new printer. [3]

[1] When you price a printer, always add the price of a standard cartridge to the printer price.
[2] Some scummy vendors are selling obsolete printers for about $300 on Amazon. I'm surprised the sleazy side of Amazon doesn't get more attention. 
[3] My LaserWriter 360 lasted about ten years, but I think it costs about $1000 @ 1992.
[4] I think I accidentally bought the standard rather than high yield cartridge with my last purchase. 
[5] If you tape over the clear plastic portal used by the toner level sensor, you can keep printing. There are many web pages that describe how to do this. The trick is to put the tape on the toner cartridge, not the carrier. When I put it on the carrier I tend to forget, and then run out of toner. This way I order a new toner, and wait until printing fails before I replace it. 

Apple extends iMac drive replacement program - will refund what I paid

A year ago, after a month of system instability but no SMART reported errors, I paid an Apple Store to repalce my 27" iMac drive. It was an annoying process. I had to buy a drive test utility to figure out what was going wrong; the drive was losing data, but the 'smart' drive OS was hiding the bad sectors from the OS. When paid to have the drive replaced it was a warranty-like service -- I had to go with the standard 1TB swap. I couldn't upgrade.

Later Apple introduced a replacement program, but my serial number didn't quality. Recently they extended the program

Apple has determined that certain Seagate 1TB hard drives used in 21.5-inch and 27-inch iMac systems may fail. These systems were sold between October 2009 and July 2011.

I received an email telling me to replace my drive. It suggested I contact Apple support if I paid for the drive. I did and I was told that I'd be refunded. Here's what I did to contact them:

• When to the Apple support site and tried each of my four Apple IDs until I found the one that currently holds my repair record.
• Wrote down the Repair ID and Case ID.
• Found the menu option for 'disk repair' in the email contact form so I could schedule a call.
• Answered the call and was routed to support person.

I'm not sure my Repair ID and Case ID were all that useful, I think they could have found me by phone number, name and address.

Update 10/24/12: Apple sent me this email, which certainly sounded suspicious ...

We need banking information to complete your refund...
Bank Name:
Bank Account Number:
Bank Routing Number (9 digits):

It's legit of course, but still. A Google search on 'checks routing number" images told me how to parse my barely used checkbook.

Update 11/7/12: Two weeks after I sent in my bank information Apple responded with a new request for bank information AND a scanned repair receipt. Not happy.

International iPhone: Using a Canadian SIM card had surprising effects on return to US - Google Voice, Voicemail, Siri

I've never heard of anything like this, but for what it's worth my use of a Canadian SIM card was associated with several iPhone 4S (unlocked) malfunctions on my return to the US. All of them were correctable, but they were surprising. I ran into six problems over a few days -- all new.

• The first time I turned on with my US AT&T SIM the phone couldn't find service. It found AT&T on a second power cycle.
• There was something odd about iMessage. Alas, I didn't pay much attention and don't recall how I fixed it.
• My data services were a bit odd. Emails seemed to send normally, but they weren't received. I had to power cycle the phone to fix taht.
• Siri failed 100% of the time, instead of the usual 40% failure rate. She woke up but didn't seem to receive my voice instruction. Turning Siri on and off fixed that.
• My voice mail didn't work. I had to reenter the pass code.
• Calls to my Google Voice number went directly to voice mail and didn't call my phone. I had to delete my mobile number from GV, then reenter and reverify the same number.

I don't know if all of these problems had the same cause, but they could all be related to problems reestablishing the relationship between my phone's IMEI  and my AT&T number.

Thinking over my swap sequence, I began by swapping in  a Rogers paygo SIM while in Canada. I turned on airplane mode until landing, then I turned it off and at that point my iPhone (IMEI?) was "roaming" in the US - interestingly, under T-mobile. For kicks I tried to text, which failed. I then turned the phone off, and put in an AT&T SIM.

The next time I return to the US from Canada I'll put the AT&T SIM in before I first enter AT&T coverage. I wonder if the transient T-Mobile roaming was the real problem. The Google Voice malfunction was particularly annoying.

VMWare Fusion 5: faster with a single file than with 2GB files?

I've been girding my primary machine for the Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion conversion for about a year. Yes, before ML was released.

Have I mentioned that I hate OS updates?

The good news is that I'm starting to like Mountain Lion on my MacBook Air. I like it enough I'm even considering replacing my main machine's problematic Magic Mouse with a Magic Pad after the conversion. So now I'm closing in on the last steps, including update my historically sluggish VMWare 3 XP image. Today I downloaded a trial version of VMWare 5; annoyingly the download is 5.0 and the first step is to upgrade to 5.01.

During the installation VMWare 5.0 offered to free up disk space; my Win XP VM had again swollen to 120GB [1]. After clean up and conversion it turned into a single 50GB file. This surprised me; I'd previously used 2GB stripes because I hoped Time Machine backup would be less affected. I suspect VMWare strongly prefers the single file model. I also took this upgrade opportunity to tell the VM to use two cores, and I shrank the XP memory allocation to the recommended 512MB [2] and set Windows internal memory management to system controlled (default).

 Probably thanks to the single file, but maybe due to the second core, the XP instance feels much quicker. In particular I'm hearing much less background disk access.

I'll stay with the single file for now, and I'll exclude it from my Time Machine backup. It will be copied by my nightly disk mirror and I'll keep an instance on another local drive.

[1] I shrank it in over a year ago, and use it very infrequently, so this large growth suggests a bug somewhere - VMWare, Windows XP, something about my setup. I'll have to keep an eye on it. I suspect at some point I might want to start over with a fresh XP image, but that's a painful thought. It's probably easier to just shrink the image periodically. In retrospect, I don't recommend converting an existing Windows system into a VMWare image.
[2] I could easily give it 2GB, but I suspect there's a reason VMWare recommends this modest allocation.

See also:

• Speeding up my sluggish XP Fusion VM
• Shrinking a pre-allocated Mac VMWare Fusion virtual machine image
• VMWare Fusion 3: Migration, PowerPoint and Shrink Disk (my initial VMWare 3 impressions)
• VMware Virtual Machines - the backup problem; Windows, not Mac, but suggests that backup/restore of the multi-file VM model can be problematic.
• How to fix permissions in an OS X Package and how deal with VMWare Fusion Insufficient Permission problems

iTunes smart playlists with nested rules

I had absolutely no idea this was possible, but iTunes smart playlists can have nested rules (Mac OS X Hints). I tried it, and it works. Option click the icon for adding rules and you get nested rules.

Unfortunately based on comments we learn that iCloud Match can barely support smart playlists at all and that nested playlists don't always work with iOS. So in general it's safer to build playlists atop playlists rather than use nesting, but it's so cool Apple once did this.

Alas I expect Apple to lobotomize iTunes with version 11 to match iCloud's limited capabilities. Until then, cool feature.

Working with a MacBook Air 11" - Tips

I don't  use my MacBook Air that often, since I usually travel with a corporate behemoth and I'm otherwise home bound or occupied. So it's taken me  a while to figure out how to make best use of the 11" screen. Here are some tips I've picked up:

• Apple made full screen mode for this device. Forget the stories about it being iOS-lite; you need full screen.
• Mountain Lion full screen works (Lion was awkward) thanks to the the 3 finger mission control gesture.
• You can move mission control screens around, so you can arrange the full screens in a common sequence that makes it easier to navigate them.
• Browser tabs now make sense. Each browser gets its own window (full screen), but tabs work within a screen. (There are some odd things with Chrome, full screen, and app switching, but not enough to make me displace Chrome as my full-time non-iOS browser).
• Sparrow for OS X is essential for a Gmail user, esp. now that Google's UIs waste vast amounts of screen real estate. Sadly it's in minimal maintenance mode (at best) since the team left for Google. It doesn't, for example, support Google two-factor verification; you have to use one of Google's security-annihilating not-really-application-specific passwords. I hope some other team will replicate Sparrow. If the Sparrow team/Google were honorable, they'd open source this app. $10 on the app store for ad-free, and worth it for however long it lasts. Since the data lives on Google there's no harm in using it for now. [1]
• I need something like Sparrow for Google Calendar -- we are cursed by Google's miserable space-wasting UI [2]. I may try OS X Calendar.app again, too bad Fantastical isn't a native extension to Google Calendar (it works through iCal). BusyCal is $50; if it were $20 I'd try the free trial. [3]

[1] Mail.app IMAP syncs too much data locally, and Apple is incompetent at delivering net services like email and calendaring. I only need my full multi-GB email repository on my home server.
[2] Apple can't do net services, Google can't do UIs. Sigh.
 

Low income computing and emergency mobile in Canada: Rogers Paygo by the minute with 100 MB/month data.

I've been tracking low cost approaches to computing over the past few years, especially because the cost of personal computing has increased so much.

Increased you say? But, you say, it's possible to buy a (not too useful) Nexus 7 for $200? What about those low cost wintops? Heck, the Raspberry Pi is almost free! How can the cost have risen?

Ahh, but today a computer without net access is almost a doorstop -- and net access is not cheap. It's not hard to find families paying more for monthly communications than they would for payments on a new car. Even though we are relatively cheap (rabbit ear TV/no cable, 2 netflix DVD plan, kids are H2O wireless voice-only mobile, war on AT&T) our family's yearly all media communications bill is probably close to $3,000 [1]. That's unaffordable for many families. It dwarfs even the 4 year amortized price of a MacBook.

So how low can one go and still be able to do basic email (Gmail), basic messing (iMessage or ad-supported), maybe some Google Voice or VOIP [2], perhaps a bit of Facebook? Based on some headache inducing research from a recent trip to Canada i think one could do it for about $170 a year including Canadian taxes - not including the cost of acquiring a 3GS (0-$150 depending on friends and family)

Here's how I get those numbers:

• Buy a $100 voucher for a Rogers PayGo by-the-minute plan. This will provide emergency mobile service for 40 cent/minute and expires after 1 year. There's a $1 fee each month for "911 access".[3]
• Pay $10 a month for 100MB of data. [4]
• Get a GSM iPhone 3GS Need iCloud services for basic backup and computer-free configuration so need iOS 6.

Are there cheaper ways to get emergency voice service, basic email, messaging and Facebook in Canada? From what I've seen in the US PayGo market this is probably about as cheap is it gets. The beauty of PayGo vouchers, of course, is that cost overruns are contained.

[1] Guesstimate, includes some media costs which aren't purely communication costs. [2] Google Voice is not VOIP of course and it's also not available in Canada. [3] I can't rule out other hidden fees that may hit. Mobile carriers are evil. 

Review: Snapfon ezONE-C Senior mobile phone (GSM, unlocked)

I bought my 83 yo mother the unlocked GSM Snapfon ezONE-C Senior Cell Phone with Big Buttons for about $80 (it's $60 now) along with its car charger (forgetting she doesn't drive any more!). I then carried it to her home in Montreal and activated on a Roger's 40 cent/min (but 0$/day) PayGo plan.

My mother likes her Mac Mini and iPad, but she's largely blind, quite arthritic, and has peripheral neuropathy reducing her sense of touch. So most phones won't work for her. This was the only phone we could find that she might be able to use. She needs, for example, to be able to call for help when Montreal's sometimes unreliable wheelchair transport service fails to show up - leaving her stuck in her wheelchair as snow swirls, water freezes, and hungry wolves approach over the ice.

It is impressive how few devices are made for people like my mother.  I assume the demand isn't there. Certainly if she were younger she might do well with a VoiceOver iPhone, but the combination of age and diminished touch make VoiceOver hard for her. In any case that was my best guess, but the next best choice to this $60 phone is probably a $700 iPhone 5.

Based on limited use, here are my impressions of the device. I'll also add a modified version of this review to Amazon.com. I'll start with the bad, then the good. Bottom line: I think it will work, but I'd rather buy a better version for $100 than the current phone for $60.

The Bad

• It doesn't get its time settings off the mobile network. Very weird.
• I fear it doesn't  persistently store its configuration. I don't want to test this, but I think prolonged removal of the battery will wipe all setup - and setup is a bit painful. File this under "suspicion" not proven. Settings do survive a quick battery swap. (Maybe it's storing some data on the SIM card, in which case I might have been confused by a SIM swap.)
• This is a very Chinese product -- feels like it was built for the Chinese or Japanese market. That is, it has a number of weird add-on features like an FM radio and a flashlight that mostly add complexity and seem weird for the US market. On the other hand, I think my mother might actually use the FM radio. It uses the ear set as an antenna. In my testing it worked well with an iPhone ear set and with iPod ear buds despite the manual saying only Nokia and SNAPFON earphones work.)
• It has too many features that can simply cause confusion and will never be used, like 'conference call' and 'call waiting'. Even SMS is of dubious value. The radio introduces many options.
• The power connector is small and hard for my mother to find. I stuck a rubber matt near it so she could find it. It is easily confused with the headphone jack.
• It feels fragile and unreliable. We're not talking iPhone 5 build. I'd happily pay $40 more for better build quality.
• Display is small and text layout is a bit off. I suspect it was designed to show characters, not Roman letters.
• Buttons take some push -- they are cheap!
• It comes with "PureTalk"; it's probably not the best PayGo solution but it's not entirely bad. For the US market I'd suggest H2O Wireless instead.

The Good

• Big buttons!
• Ringer is LOUD and voice loud even at intermediate settings.
• The instruction manual is large type.
• I could get a camera lanyard into the lanyard hoop with a bit of fiddling (essential accessory, should be bundled with phone).
• It speaks numbers as they are entered. Great feature!
• Seems to have very long battery life.
• The quick dial numbers will work well I think, even though we decided not to enable the SOS feature for now.
• Yes, the flashlight and radio are quirky, but my mother might actually come to like them.

I created a large print 1 page handout for my mother that included a simplified version of usage directions and the numbers I programmed in for her.