@Leindurstit while in principle I agree with you. The issue is that there is an oligopoly on mobile phone service in the U.S. - these fees and charges can and will be matched by competitors in due time if scrutiny is not applied. The fees are not in the best interest of the consumer, they are certainly onerous. The issue is that lower exit fees is not really a selling point for any of the companies in terms of attracting new contracts. They don't want you to churn, and if you do churn they want to hit your wallet for as much as possible on the way out because well, they can and also because that is what everyone does.

Hilarious:

Verizon claims that users are not charged for launching the browser.

Well I suppose that is technically correct. Launching the browser will not in and of itself create a charge. However the subsequent and most likely automatic loading of the browsers default URL sure will. They aren't making any friends by saying things like that.

Given what the "notifications" look like I think this will largely be unuseable. For texting this is fine, but for any application that has large volumes of messages e.g. IM, or even news this will be unuseable. Additionally, visually how do you differentiate from different sources? Does this really solve the problem of needing to run processes that do more than just display a modal dialog?

From a UI perspective you cannot make every notification a modal dialog - it's untenable. This strategy brings to mind something a kin to using Netsend for IM, but only being able to display one message at a time.

Sometimes I wonder about Apple's ability to handle user interface complexity.

The "it just works" goal for the iPhone as the summary stated is a failure.

The failure is primarily due to the fact that the phone with default settings does a poor job of managing it's battery. Additionly certain "features" such as "auto-correct" don't work very well, and are difficult to turn off without digging through 4 levels of menus. Thus a high level of poking around is required to optimize the phone's performance.

That said, I do not mind managing my inventory or running apps, I suspect that most of the iPhone users out there are also capable of choosing which apps they wish to have running. I mean, given one of Apple's "intuitive" user interfaces, it should be easy, right?

It continues to baffle me how Apple can go out and sell a computer that can only run one program at once.

Of course I bought one... I guess one program running is better than none. ;)

@Tim That is not the point, it is the principle of it. Ads have been isidiously invading TiVo for years, every year they show up in some new part of the interface.

TiVo makes you pay an insanely high fee for what? A TV guide? For a simple data feed that someone could compile almost for free.

On top of that you have to pay for the hardware.

Every year TiVo expands their revenue stream with your eye balls, but there is never a savings to you.

I can assure you if you went from the TiVo ad model of today and applied it to TiVo users interfaces 3 years ago there would be outrage.

Protest! cancel your netflix membership and send them an e-mail.

This it is a direct result of Blu-Ray not having competition in the market place. This is a bad precident.

Protest, cancel today for a month!

Logan

179 is high - most batteries are between 80 - 130. You also have the option of buying OEM. The notion of having to schedule an appointment to replace my battery is absurd. On top of that you can be sure that apple "claims" 8 hours of battery life but the reality will vary significantly.

As an XPS 1330 owner who has had problems - I am still very, very happy with my computer. It's fast, light and fast. It gets great battery life for the amount of power available. I just put an Intel SSD in the X25-M and it's even better - completly silent.

The 1340 is meant to do two things - provide an upgrade path for the 1330 owners and convert others into perceiving the "xps/adamo" laptop brand as "premium". I hope the super slim WXGA led panel is of better quality than the last.

When the XPS 1330 was released there was no machine besides the mac book pro that could compare. Again, Dell pushes the limits and delivers a capable compact notebook with discreet FX in a nice package.

And on more thing... it has a windows key :)

Logan

I'm pretty sure the reason there is no turn by turn on the iPhone is that it would kill the device and not work, at all. The GPS rarely kicks in for me, it's usually just the cell tower positioning. I also bought an app called GPS kit, and it rarely can get a signal.

Honestly,

Despite it's EDGE connection, slightly slow CPU, the damn thing worked, and worked everywhere. The winmo smartphone version is great (on the dash), I do not like the Pocket PC version. With exchange and the 6.1 update there is server side mail searching, which quite honestly is the most valueable feature while traveling. Finding itinerary information or hotel reservations that were sent to you a week ago is a task beyond the iPhone, but the little old dash could do it. Additionally, programming .NET on winmo is really easy and i made some cool GPS apps in a short time. The battery life on the last dash was very good, only needing to be charged every two to three days. It had the added benefit of being mini-USB compatible. It's also rugged, I can't speak about the screen issue, but after a few months I lost the fancy case it came with and carried it in my pocket, sat on it, and dropped it a couple times. It had a good keyboard, my only complaint was using blue paint for the special keys and then having a blue keyboard backlight. The rubberized back was really nice, and had a good feel in the hand. The micro SD card slot was cool too. It did not have enough memory though, which was a problem. The MS Virtual Earth client was really cool, but sometimes it would lock the phone up when it lost cell reception, no idea why. I have traveled the world with the phone and have only good things to say about it. It still sits on my desk because I don't have the heart to get rid of it. The iPhone has a number of features that go beyond the scope of a phone, and that's cool and all, but as a communications/navigation device the Dash was truly good at what it did. R.I.P. Dash!