Trade in and Save $50 with HPVerizon Hub is no more
Verizon Hub has been discontinued.
(Credit: Verizon)Earlier this year, Verizon stepped into the Voice over IP business with the Verizon Hub, which had far loftier ambitions than simply replacing your landline.
With weather and time widgets, a calendar system, traffic information, a family bulletin board, and even support for streaming video clips from V Cast, the Verizon Hub promised to be a one-stop-shop communications center for your home. We admit we were intrigued when we heard about it, and we even thought it had quite a bit of promise in our review of the device.
Unfortunately, the Verizon Hub just wasn't successful. The hardware was expensive--it was $200 for the Hub and $80 for additional cordless handsets--and the service was an additional $35 a month. Perhaps there was a failure in marketing the product to the mainstream. In any case, Verizon has stopped selling the Verizon Hub. A Verizon representative we spoke to assured us they will still provide service and support to existing Hub customers.
But maybe the real question is whether the Hub could have succeeded in the first place. In a time where we can replicate much of the same functionality with a laptop and a cell phone, is something like this even necessary? Perhaps there's room in the future for a convergence device--a touch-screen tablet, maybe? Let us know what you think about the Hub or "kitchen computers" in general.
(Via Zatsnotfunny)
Nicole Lee is an associate editor for CNET, covering cell phones, Bluetooth headsets, and all things mobile. She's also pretty geeky--she likes World of Warcraft, comic books, and shiny gadgets. E-mail Nicole.
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their hands on the latest mobile electronics. 
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Nicole Lee reviews cell
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Oh, I'm sure the device had all the functionality it touted, it's just bad judgment by Verizon. Utterly unclear of how typical American consumers operate. How many times have you seen a person use a smartphone in a kitchen? Lots, probably.
Also, a key point about the usability of smartphones is one-handed mobile operation. You can walk around and operate a smartphone and do something else. With a larger device like a tablet, you must stop whatever else you're doing and use both hands.
It's a shame technology journalists and pundits still don't understand this point.
"I?m an ER doctor. This morning, a 10 year old with a rare metabolic disease was brought in ?seizing and not breathing. Perhaps her mother was surprised to see me reach first into my white coat pocket for my iphone.
First, I needed a quick dip into Calculator to convert pounds into kilos. Next to Skyscape mobile 5 Minute Emergency Consult to double check drug sequences. The RSI (Rapid Sequence Induction) gave me precalculated drug doses for emergency intubation?all five of them that I needed, and all at once. Waiting for the nurses to pull the drugs, I dove into Eponyms for a quick overview of the rare condition?Refsum?s syndrome. Bingo. Off to Wikipedia for a few additional details. Epocrates ran my drug/drug interaction check. The ABG app helped me interpret her complex blood gas result. Without leaving the bedside, I could contact her specialist, could check weather conditions at the tertiary care referral center where the helicopter would need to land, could show the parents the path of the breathing tube in the Netter anatomy app.
Think the app store doesn?t matter? Don?t bet your life on it. Chances are your doctor doesn?t agree."
Source: http://news.cnet.com/8618-17938_105-10274278.html?communityId=2007&targetCommunityId=2007&blogId=1&messageId=8112341
I wouldn't mind if they research a condition after stabilizing the patient but not at a bed side while the person is unable to breathe and in a life/death situation.
Shenanigans ...just my $.02
Sorry guys, I just reposted some lady's comment from another Cnet thread. When you join the rest of us in the 21st century, you'll realize that smartphones are real tools, not just toys.
Good luck.
We don't care if you use a smartphone for information (I call shenanigans on the fact that hospitals don't generally want cell phones around their gear) but the fact that if a medical provider used wikipedia to get details about anything for me, I wouldn't care what is wrong I would have the hospital administrator do a full review of that doctor. Also...hospitals generally have resources for doctors to refer too.....which I would expect this doctor to use instead of web based stuff, considering the rare condition was ALREADY known (from reading what you posted).
Lots of devices can do lots of things, but I for one would not be very happy about a doctor relying on a $39 Walgreens blood pressure meter, or having my life hang in the balance because in the middle of trying to use their iPhone to calculate some critical value or lookup some critical piece of data, they got a phone call, their phone crashed or their battery died..
Regarding the whole idea of a "kitchen computers" and so on - I think any sort of "appliance-like" computer is potentially a very handy thing, it depends on the practicality of the design. Like I said above, you can do lots of things with lots of devices, but whether or not it's practical to do so is another matter. I for one wouldn't want to feel like I had to use a tiny device with a tiny screen and a limited UI to do something like check the weather before I leave the house, especially if I was also trying to use that same device to have a phone conversation, a text conversation, check the current time, etc.
I would think the Verizon Hub would have been more successful if Verizon had used it as a value-add bundle to something like their high-end FiOS broadband service, rather than something that Verizon is trying to make an independent profit-center via a monthly service charge. It would add a distinction to their broadband service, something I would think would make business sense in the current marketplace.
Did the moments saved by handling everything from her smartphone improve the child's chances of survival? Who knows, but at least the doctor had a choice.
The fact of the matter is that tools like smartphones are making a difference. These devices are making an impact in things like live events (elections), disaster response, etc. One must be very careful to mandate a total ban of this type of technology (as sshtdifferentday or iroq321 have suggested).
Like the blog poster, you people really aren't seeing the big picture, the large-scale implications of this type of technology. Something like smartphone technology is revolutionizing the tech-resistant medical field. To wish for this to be sent back ten years in time is just going to drive up your insurance rates. Enjoy.
I've had RIM outages on my old blackberry, and spotty AT&T/wi-fi access far too many times for me to think the bar for standards of new medical tools should be so low.
That doesn't mean that people who disagree with you aren't in the 21st century. Agreeing that the technology itself can revolutionize the medical field but requiring more robust networks on which to rely for life-altering care are not mutually exclusive.
Incidentally, I don't see where the original blogger mentioned anything about the medical field, and I'm quite certain the Verizon Hub's target market wasn't our local ER.
Just because hospitals and other clinical environments may take a cautious approach to things like consumers bringing cellphones into critical-care areas for fear their RF radiation may impact life-critical medical equipment, doesn't mean they are "tech resistant". What it means is that they are being cautious and responsible when people's lives are at stake. In case you haven't noticed, there are many other situations where cellphones are banned - like in airliners, where the consequences of some unexpected RF interaction could mean the death of hundreds of people at once.
There is a good reason why it takes a number of years and many tests and evaluations to market a piece of medical equipment in this country - that is because the consequences of that equipment's failure can blatantly endanger public health en-masse. An anecdotal example here or there of someone using a consumer device to help them in their medical duties says nothing about that big picture. Nothing. You come across as just a flag-waving tech-toy fanboi. And I'm damn glad you aren't a doctor.
Sure Id love an appliance like this but let me pick my provider and price is less important then the quality and drop the nickel and dimeing of the customer just add an extra phone and let us know more are available.
the girl dress shopping possibly the worst example of a reason to own this device.
Beyond a slightly larger screen, there's very little you could do with the hub that you couldn't do with a smartphone. And I work at an indirect store and we could never get the hub in. Talked to the folks in the next town at the corporate store, and they said the port-over process was a chore and half the time it didn't work, even when you could port your landline # to a regular wireless phone. The hub might have had a future if it had been marketed correctly and easy to get and set up.
Is Verizon not allowed to have things sitting in the store, not being bought, does it cost money to have it sit in the store for me to buy it.... They couldn't have kept it a few more months until the economy got better?!
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by ideaquest
November 24, 2009 7:04 PM PST
- I was surprised by the speed of it being taken down. Initially I was thinking about what had happened in the netbook market where the first mover may not had quite get the specs correct (e.g. 7" screen which eventually moved to 10"). So I thought there could be some iterations on what are the features that users like that could be enhanced or what are the ones they did not care about which may be removed. But the sudden death of it looks to be more like a business decision. I think saving money, convenience and ease of use are important aspects to users. Of course, there are different types of users but as a new product, it should be pitching at some sectors of the home users. For example, the Netbook was initially targeted at new users but the reality in the end was that it became an option for existing laptop (notebook) users. The OS started on linux but eventually it went to WinXP. So, when I looked at the development at Verizon, I am puzzled as to what lessons could be learnt from it. Do people want a larger screen? Walled mounted or portable device? How can this new device compete with the Computer, Laptop, iTouch, Smart phone, etc? Is there going to be the 4th screen device (after the TV, computer & digital photoframe)? What I am quite certain is that the Internet influence (web information) will eventually be accessible everywhere in the home. Today, you can do that by bring your mobile device around your house but eventually, you can access it anywhere via devices in each room, screens in your kitchen, in your corridors, at the door, toilets, etc. Or am I dreaming again?
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