The price of knowledge

I thought that putting a custom ring tone on my new cell phone would be just a simple matter of copying an mp3 file to the appropriate folder on the memory card that came with the phone. In fact, I recall the salesman telling me, when I bought my phone, that I could do this by using a card reader device. Well, I figured I could use my LifeDrive for this purpose. I was able to place a copy of a 47-second extract of Friday Nights at The Wedge onto the memory card, but when I put the card back into the phone, do you think the phone could see it? No!!!

So I reasoned that the file has to be in a specific folder on the card to be recognized by the phone, but do you think I knew what that folder should be? Do you think the phone manual documented this? No, and no. So it became time for a little reverse engineering. Maybe if I installed a downloadable ring tone I could inspect the card to see what folder it got placed in and I would place my own file in the same place. I would have to pay for the downloadable ring tone, but that's the price of knowledge, no?

The crappy MIDI rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody cost me $2.00 to purchase, plus whatever the cost is for the data connection. I installed the file as my new ring tone, verified it works. I popped the memory card out of the phone and into my LifeDrive and searched for the Bohemian Rhapsody file - and did I find it? You guessed it - no. It must have gone to the phone's internal memory, to which I have no access. Doh!

Finally I did what I should have done in the first place and saved myself the $2.00. Did an internet search, found a discussion forum full of people who wanted to do the same thing I did, and finally found a step by step description of what I need to do.

Crappy downloadable version of Bohemian Rhapsody - $2.00. Knowing how to set Friday Nights at The Wedge as my custom ring tone - priceless.