KA3DRR and K9ZW both reported yesterday on the Flex-Radio announcement of two new software defined radio products that will soon be offered.

As always, I have an opinion: I think this could be the most important new product launch in the amateur radio service in a decade. It will put software defined radio into the financial reach of almost every radio amateur. And if a significant number of us take that leap, it could be precisely the kind of paradigm shift that will usher in a new age of amateur radio.

Sound like too much hype?

Perhaps, but the future of the hobby is already intrinsically tied to software.

It’s the engine that drives all of our new radio equipment, from handhelds to top-of-the-line HF transceivers. It’s all about software, and until Flex-Radio came along, it was pretty much the exclusive domain of the uber geeks.

Flex-Radio shattered that ceiling with their popular and fully featured SDR-1000. As the SDR community evolved around that equipment, the geeks and the non-geeks worked together to develop more software and to refine the methods being used with the eventual result being the FLEX-5000 – another software defined radio that competes equally with HF equipment that sells for three or four times its cost.

Even so, the roughly $3000 base price for the FLEX-5000 has kept it out of reach of those whose discretionary hobby spending remains solidly below the $2K threshold.

The just announced FLEX-3000 will hit the market at $1599 (save $100 by pre-ordering).

The just announced FLEX-1500, a QRP version (1 watt) will hit the market sometime next year at $499.

The relatively small SDR community has managed to do some pretty amazing things and has literally reshaped the way modern HF communication is practiced in the short time it has been in play.

I find it difficult to even imagine where we will be with this technology in five years if SDR suddenly goes “mainstream” – but I have a feeling that we are about to find out.

I’m pre-ordering an FLEX-3000 – how about you?

Longtime readers may recall the snafu that caused me to lose my GMail account and 100Mb of personal email that was stored there about a year ago.

For those who don’t, here’s a quick recap:

Being a typical early adopter, I had a GMail account before most folks had even heard of GMail. In the sign-up process, I wanted my username to be my name; but with a common name like Jeff Davis, that was impossible. I went through every possible variation of my first name, last name, etc. with no luck.

And then I hit on jl.davis which was my first two initials, separated from my last name by a dot, and that magic incantation was accepted and I became a happy GMail user.

(A very important part of this story is that the username “jldavis” with no dot separator was not available – so we are left to assume there must have already been a user with that name.)

Fast-forward a few years and one day I received an email from the folks at Google telling me the “good news” about my GMail account – that now any dot variation on my username would work. In other words, if my username was ‘jeffdavis’, then mail sent to je.ffdavis or any such variation would be routed to me.

I have no clue why that would be considered a “feature”, but that was the news from Google.

At once I assumed this would be a problem since I already had a dot in my username, and sure enough, it was.

The next day I couldn’t log into my account. I received the error message that my username and password didn’t match and nothing I tried (like the password recovery routine) would work. I can only assume that by linking my account with another user, I would had to have cracked his password to gain access to the recovery process.

Emails and calls to Google were dead ends as the reply I received said simply that GMail was a free “beta” service and as such, there was no support available to deal with user problems. They cheerily suggested I open another account with a new username – after all, the service was free!

My solution was to purchase email service from Microsoft. By paying $20 a year I get more storage and no adverts in my email but more importantly, I get access to human service if there is ever a problem.

I’m regurgitating this old story because I just read about someone who very recently had nearly the same experience with GMail and it should serve as a warning bell to all.

I like Google. I like their search engine and all the cool tools they develop and make freely available to us all.

Heck, I even love GMail (yes, I got another account) but I will never be able to trust it for important emails again.

For that, I had to turn to Microsoft. Make of that what you will.