Earlier this morning, I met one of our readers in the local Starbucks. I did have my USB 727 adapter for 3G, but I opted to use my new Boingo Wireless account with Wi-Fi instead. I signed up for the $9.99 monthly plan about two-weeks ago and I’m making use of it a few times per week. I’ll share more on my why I’m not using my 3G adapter in the near future. For now, I wanted to circle back to a relevant reader question from Luscious: a frequent and insightful commenter who also has a blog devoted to notebook reviews and information.

Luscious asked me about bandwidth limits on the Boing plans. That’s a great question because as anyone who uses 3G likely knows, “unlimited” data plans are often capped at 5GB per month.

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Got a reader question from Bob, who asks what headphones James and I use when we’re out traveling or just hitting the local Starbucks. When my original iPhone headset broke, I opted to go with a set of Shure SE210s because they seemed to be a quality set that was within my price range. Shure offers higher-end products in the same line, but the SE210s fit my budget. Since they sit in the ear canal, they isolate the outside sound to a large degree; it’s not total noise cancellation and it’s not an active method, but they work quite well. I’ve enjoyed them on several airline flights recently and during the summer they work great when I’m on the tractor cutting the lawn for two or more hours. Hmm… I just realized why I like winter so much.Anyway, give Bob a hand and tell him what you’re using and why. He tried a Bose set, but they didn’t cut it on a flight for him. He’s also considering this set of Sony ‘phones with active noise cancellation, so if you’ve tried them, give a shout!

Got a question in the mailbag, and even though it applies to the iPhone, I suspect my answer will apply to the new Zunes as well. The question is: how to get or rip DVDs for use on the iPhone. There’s a number of solutions, but the best I’ve found is Handbrake, a free application for Mac or PC. In fact, Handbrake has custom settings specific for outputting DVD content to the iPhone’s screen and resolution. I used it just this week to get "Star Trek: Insurrection" on my iPhone since I’ll be traveling this weekend; with the decent screen size and res, movies look fantastic on the device.

You can play with the various Handbrake settings to change the output resolution, bitrate and such, but the iPhone presets work extremely well. You’ll get a nice compromise between picture quality and file size: Insurrection is an hour and 42 minutes long but only takes up 1.2 GB on my iPhone. Bear in mind the time to convert the audio & video: my 1:42 movie took about an hour to complete. Don’t forget that the new Zune devices will support H.264 / MPEG-4 codecs, so I imagine you’ll be able to use Handbrake to get DVDs on those as well. Handbrake will not work if a DVD has copy protection enabled; I’ve already found that out the hard way with the latest James Bond movie. I’ll leave that to you and Google to figure out.

Jay sent us a note this morning and along with kind words about the site, he asked our thoughts on a home inventory solution: "I’m about to begin research on a means of creating an electronic home inventory that will enable me to photograph items and document all relevant information (purchase date, price, receipts, warranty info, serial numbers, etc.). I’m willing to pay for software to do this, and I’ve also toyed around with rolling my own via Excel or Access."

Now there’s a multitude of ways to approach this challenge, but my immediate thought was to use software that we’ve talked about extensively before…

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One of the first things I did on the iPhone was to configure it for my e-mail. I’m still using 4Smartphone for my hosted Exchange account as I mentioned in my "Hosted Exchange 101" post earlier this week. I know that my provider supports IMAP, so I knew that I should be able to get the mail from the Exchange server to the iPhone.

Once I configured it, I ran into a problem: I was able to receive mail, but I was unable to send mail. A few minutes later, I had figured out the minor issue and just in time: this afternoon one of our readers had the same issue. Ken shot me a note indicating that he too uses 4Smartphone for Exchange but he could only receive mail, not send it. I explained these two simple configuration tips:

1. I used the Exchange tab on the iPhone, not the IMAP tab. Ken was using the IMAP tab, which might work but I’m not going to undo my mail settings to find out.
2. Quite often people put their mailbox ID and password on the Incoming server settings, but not on the Outgoing server settings. This was my issue which is easy to resolve and Ken had done the same thing.

Once I passed this info to Ken, he added his credentials for the Outgoing server and he was sending mail without any issue. A common-sense, simple solution that’s easy to overlook when quickly configuring your e-mail client.

Rich’s note gets the nod today. He’s asking a general question that I’m sure quite a few folks might be interested in: "I use a Toshiba M400 Tablet at the moment and I am thinking of getting a Samsunq Q1. I wanted to ask…If I upgrade it to 1GB of RAM will it run Vista well? I intend to use it as a media player, and use outlook 2007 for email. I will not want it to replace my Tablet and won’t do anything too taxing with it."

That’s a great UMPC scenario as it becomes a companion device to another computer, in this case an M400.

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Dave’s note from the Inbox gets the nod today and we’ll need some help with the answer. Here’s the situation:

"I’m desparately looking for a way to plug a compact flash memory card into my XV6700 cell phone.  Basically I’m looking for a Compact Flash to miniSD adapter.  There are lots of options the other way around, but I’m having no luck finding anything close to what I need….I use Pocket Phojo on the 6700 to transmit images back to my newspaper.  but my cameras use the CF cards and can’t afford to switch to miniSD cards inside a compact flash adapter."

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Hot on the heels of yesterday’s similar question where your participation added tremendous value, it’s time for another. Lawrence asks what I think is the best UMPC on the market. I always answer that question with a question, simply because "best" is subjective. Repeat the mantra with me everyone: "Choosing a computing device is a personal choice and it all depends on what you intend to use the device for." What works for me or you might not work for Lawrence because we have different needs, right? I asked for some clarity around how Lawrence intends to use his device and here’s what he said:

"I am a real estate developer and am on the go all of the time.  I need to be able to read leases and documents in pdf or word file.  Also, email and use the internet a lot.  Would be great if I could use it as a telephone too.  Down time will use music and like to watch movies while traveling.  Money is not a pressure point, but would like ease of use. "

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Russ dropped us note and asked us to help with his Q1P purchase decision. Since you can currently purchase the Q1P with XP Tablet Edition 2005 or with Vista, he’s wondering which he should get. His specific question here might shed some light:

"I am looking to really utilize the handwriting features for meeting notes, etc…  I was wondering how well the handwriting works in vista versus XP tablet edition and i was curious as to which version you would purchase in regards to vista or tablet edition? Are there any major differences in operating capabilites, handwriting recognition, etc… that would make you lean one way or another? I really liked the vista origami experience but could live without if the handwriting in a tablet form was not as good in vista."

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Got a question from long-time reader, Mike, in the ol’ mailbag. Mike’s been following my mobile adventures for a few years and remembers when Barb and I spent the near equivalent of 20+ refurbished MacBook Pros for our 2006 Toyota Highlander Hybrid. Sound like a bunch of money? Well, it was, but it was also a great investment for us and you don’t hear too many folks say that about cars.

Mike was curious to see if and how the hybrid vehicle was holding up for us, so here’s a relatively quick update….

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