Carriers are dumb pipes in many EU countries. Lockins are forbidden in several EU countries, as well as packaged deals where you buy a contract and get a phone for free.

Sure, there's a 1 euro smartphone, but nobody buys it. Everybody buys their smartphone, and then switch contract every 6 months to suit their needs :)

I had a very old Nokia for ages, that even when I replaced it with the phone I got when I started working, that had a battery that could go for 'at least' one week. I used it solely for calling and messages, which is all it could do too, no camera, no colour screen, nada! Loved it ...

Then I got my first iPhone, a 3G, battery life was down, I left Bluetooth, Wifi, 3G on all the time. I was constantly interacting with the phone which as anybody with an app-ridden iPhone knows, kills your battery in terms of minutes to one hour ...

Then I adapter to how to use a phone that can do a lot, just dumb it down a bit. Bluetooth I never use, so that's constantly off. At night I turn it off, as I don't need the radiation next to my head (and I do use it as my backup alarm clock so ...), 3G I turn off when I'm at the office, since I'm usually at my laptop, same for Wifi, which is almost never on. And on top of that, I dim the screen ever so slightly.

Combine that with a charger in my car, I have a daily recharge in the evenings, which suits me fine.

Battery life of my telephone isn't important that way, it's always working when I need it, I tend not to forget charging it, so I really don't bother.

Conclusion: I don't know what to answer here, what is the expectancy of my phone with one full charge? No idea, I'm not waiting till it runs out of juice, to charge it ... I bet it could be anywhere between one of three days for the 4G I have now. But who knows ... and more importantly, who cares.

Brilliant ending to that ridiculously hostile post.

Well noted. Did you get all that from the numerous statements out there from Apple that they don't give the tiniest bit about business, and would rather focus on the big market, the average joes?

Why go for a market that is harder to work with, easier to annoy, demands discounts, etc. When you could just as well sell everything, at original price, whenever you want, however you want?

It's not just an (unpaid) hour and a half of your life that you get back.

It's an hour and a half of your life back, every workday.

And it'll be 45 minutes twice when you want it, not just at the end of the day, attached to it: the first months all days will feel like you're sleeping in, you'll have time for that proper breakfast again, you'll be able to plan different activities in the evening since a) you have more time in the evening and b) don't have to get up as early in the morning, if you have any, it'll be time your kids aren't sleeping, etc.

Even if it was just the commute it would be worth considering if you ask me.

So consider the time you're gaining and don't forget you're not just loyal to your current job, you're also on a friendly basis. They know you, and considering that, will probably understand and either accept or compensate (maybe flexible hours? overwork more properly payed in days off, etc.).

So it's up to you really. What advice do we need to give really, you're obviously taking the time to consider the consequences which means you care enough to. Whatever you decide, it'll be the right thing.

Nobody said anything about shipping them to their employees either.

Making that into a politician-only sentiment is a little dishonest too.

"Every cell phone is directly associated with a credit card."

Really? Let's see some facts and figures here. My iPhone isn't ... you can have your appstore/itunesstore account perfectly happy without CC info.

That's the way it works for us.

The 'technical' people work for customers either in the home office or on site at the customer. We enter each hour we work into the hour registration system, which is then used to see if we work enough, or too much, and to prepare invoices to the customer.

When we help Sales with their work, we get a reduction of our target amount of hours we need to be able to be invoiced to a customer (usually 93% of a fulltime). So it works out for us if we spend time doing Sales, we don't 'have' to do as much IT work. Of course we can do both and push our billable hours way up which is good for our end-year evaluation.

Also, we have a yearly evaluation form that's filled out by and for us. It contains a special area where you can write down everything you did for sales, etc. and it will be taken into account for your possible promotion, payraise, sacking, whatever :)

This is not true in the US? In most countries there's a difference between:

- Credit cards, work on credit. Draw cash, it'll always be (a ridiculously high) fee
- Bank cards, draw directly from your account, possibly with credit, but payed direct. And they usually don't have fees. At least in our little governementless country called Belgium and the rest of Western Europe

"And FCC engineer T.A.M. Craven was absolutely certain back in 1961 that there was 'no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio service inside the United States."

And in a sense, he's completely right. It hasn't really improved :)

That's a touch shortsighted. Even for a newspaper with a million readers, who supposedly all bought their newspaper. Do you have any idea how much it costs to:

- Pay the journalists or pay freelancers for articles
- Pay for copyright on photography, or your own photographes, or freelancers
- Pay for the editors who make the texts into what they are
- Pay the layouters who make the pages
- Pay for a couple middle mgmt people to decide what goes on which page, and how
- Pay for all the materials used in that process
- Have dozens of seperate people who do regional editions and news, with their own layouters, etc.

Then, when you've got your newspaper, you need to pay for:

- A printing press
- A full shift of employees for the press, who are payed for working a night shift, which doesn't make things cheaper
- Keep extra folk on the redaction to make sure there are no mistakes in the newspaper, and who stay there till 1 in the night to make sure no 'big news' is missed for tomorrow's newspaper

And that's just the beginning, then other companies come in and take their grabs of profit, as the papers don't get distributed and picked up again if not sold, for free ...

Besides, newspapers have contained adds since day 1, and it's always been the primary source of income for written media. (that and biased opinion pieces :)

Your several dollars / month, times a million for all the readers, is let's say 3 million dollar per month. You think that's viable? For, there's a sunday edition, 26 editions of 60 pages? We haven't even started counting stuff like electricity, heating, lease on the building, etc.

This is the so-manieth post about cheating in single player mode gets you banned.

No, cheating in single player mode does NOT get you banned. It's allowed, been implemented and done.

Cheating to get ACHIEVEMENTS however, is an entirely different matter. Since you're bypassing the built-in system that when you cheat (which can be a hell-lot-of-fun) achievements are disabled for you ... It's honestly not _that_ hard to see the difference between those two.