You sign up for a free number from something like Google Voice and you can text only over WiFi with that...

And there are ample anti-malware/anti-virus apps available for Android in the Play Store. I'm on my 4th Android phone and have installed all kinds of software, legit and less so, and have yet to encounter any malware or viruses. Know how many are available in the Apple iTunes store? Zero. If they allowed one to be listed, it would be admitting that their precious iPhones are vulnerable.

yet...

Swatch(tm) makes a video watch for that purpose... but they call it the Twatch(tm)...

If you root your phone and install an ad blocker (I use AdAway by Dominik Schürmann), then most of those "free apps w/ ads" become "free apps".

If it's an app I like, I'll usually pay the $1 (or more) to buy it - I've purchased over 50 apps through the Google Play Store - usually ones that were part of a $0.99 sale, but a few others that I use all the time, like Titanium Backup and CoPilot GPS because they were definitely worth more than the few dollars they cost.

Then root the damn thing and un-install all that crap!

My first Android phone was the HTC Desire from US Cellular - it was actually a pretty decent phone, but they partitioned the memory and only allowed you access to a small partition - the rest contained the OS plus all of the bloatware that USC wanted on the phone - Myspace? Seriously? In 2011 you're still putting Myspace in the system partition where it can't be uninstalled?

Long story short - rooted it, repartitioned the storage area and installed a "stock without all the bloat + Apps2SD" ROM and after that it truly was a good phone.

I'm on a Samsung Galaxy S III now - rooted it right away and uninstalled (after backing up) any crappy bloatware I didn't want.

Without knowing which app, we can't know for sure if it was pulled. The App Store filters (by default) apps based on whether they are compatible with your device(s) -- if you de-registered your old device and only have the new device registered,then incompatible apps will not be shown.

I was outraged by the fact that it was a penny (1 cent) slot machine, but the lowest possible dollar amount you could play was something like 200x, so even though it's a $0.01 machine, it ends up costing you $2.00 every time you push the Play button... Admittedly, not a lot of money, but you don't sit at the $0.01 machines because you want the pay $2.00 per pull...

I would have watched that!

I'm just waiting for Apple to claim that they invented the concept of a ~7" tablet and that all of the ones that have been on the market for years are actually copying their design...

Those of us who live in small towns in the Midwest where Walmart K-mart or Target are your only real options for modern day electronics, unless you feel up to a 75 minute drive to a "big city" that has an electronic appliance store. If I'm going to waste that much gas and time, I'll just have it shipped Next Day Air - or go to Wal-Mart and get it right now.

You push the power button on the Kindle Fire and the screen turns off. You push it again and the screen comes on and you're looking at the lock screen with adds - swipe the screen and the lock screen and ads go away. They are not displayed on the screen when the device is off. On the e-ink displays the ads are displayed when the Kindle is turned off, but it requires no power to maintain the screen in that state - every once in a while the device wakes up, updates the ad and goes back to sleep - it uses very tiny amounts of power and has almost on impact on expected battery life.

I contacted support through the live chat on their website and got the usual "this is a known issue, we are working to correct it ASAP, until then please manually download the APK files" and I'm OK with that.

I bough the bundle just to show support for a non-anime-themed RPG for Android - For some reason the anime-themed RPGs just don't sit well with me, I want my heroes to look like heroes, not 6 year old children with big eyes...

I'm not trying to dispute your claims, or belittle you in any way, but... how many people buy a $35 computer and expect to be able to have 10 tabs open in Firefox?

When you get to the point that the USB mouse and keyboard you have to provide probably cost more than the computer itself, you can't be too particular about how many tabs you can have open on your HD widescreen display...