Vlad Hrybok's Tech Notes

Here's what I didn't get from U-Verse despite sales woman's promise:

• Static IP address: they don't do it. Period. The best they could do is to setup 28 day (instead of 24 hour) DHCP lease for my IP address.
  
  
• Free receivers/STBs with U-Verse TV U100 package: Was charged for each additional receiver and had to negotiate with AT&T. Got credit to the current bill and six month promotional discount to bring the price close to the initially stated. What happens after 6 months - don't want to think about it right now.
  
  
• Price lock-in: I was promised that price won't go up. Not the case - AT&T rep on the phone said there is no such commitment.

The bottom line: videotape or at least record what your sales person commits to, including your services and amount you are going to pay in recurring charges, plus make her state discounts and rebates you will receive.

Update:
Just to make it clear: you won't have to wire your house yourself before U-Verse is installed - AT&T tech will do it for you. The most important things to realize is that AT&T tech can use either coaxial cable (adding to existing TV cable in your house), or wire your house with cat5e Ethernet cable. I am just letting you know that it is apparently up to you to ask the tech to use Ethernet cable instead of coax. If you don't ask, the technician is likely to simply add coax cable because it's less work, but if you ask for Ethernet, you should be able to get it. And since (at least in my case) they wire up to 10 locations in your house for free (up to 4 TV sets and 6 computers - they will wire only existing TVs and computers/game consoles, not planned or desired one), you can upgrade your house by getting Ethernet cabling for free when you sign up for AT&T U-Verse.

Original post:
I asked U-Verse installation tech to use CAT5 Ethernet wiring instead of coax, and he didn't mind. He wired all rooms where I have TVs or computers with Ethernet CAT5e cable, and hooked them up using RG ports and a Netgear Gigabit switch AT&T provided. Needless to say, you can add any number of computers later if you deploy your own switches, preferably Gigabit ones to ensure there is plenty of bandwidth to carry multiple TV streams along with regular network traffic. Wiring up your house for Ethernet is a good freebie from AT&T. Be sure to tell your U-Verse sales person how many rooms you want to wire. Also make it clear to the installer tech which rooms with TVs and computers you want to wire BEFORE he starts. If you change your mind or remember you left out a room with a TV or PC, AT&T will charge you for added wiring.

By default iPhone 3G is configured to check emails only manually. To make it check email regularly the change in the settings needs to be made. Since I spent more time than I expected finding out how to make iPhone 3G check email periodically, I decided that it's worthy a post. I was looking all over Settings | Email, Calendar and Contacts, where I thought the setting would be, and could not find it. Instead it turned out to be Settings | Fetch New Data. That what drives frequency of email checks: