mariushm writes "After deciding to shelve metered broadband plans, it looks like Time Warner is cutting off, with no warning, the accounts of customers whom they deem to have used too much bandwidth. 'Austin Stop The Cap reader Ryan Howard reports that his Road Runner service was cut off yesterday without warning. According to Ryan, it took four calls to technical support, two visits to the cable store to try two new cable modems (all to no avail), before someone at Time Warner finally told him to call the company's "Security and Abuse" center. "I called the number and had to leave a voice mail, and about an hour later a Time Warner technician called me back and lectured me for using 44 gigabytes in one week," Howard wrote. Howard was then "educated" about his usage. "According to her, that is more than most people use in a year," Howard said.'"

Harry writes "Microsoft's new Windows ad, with shopper Lauren buying a cheap 17-inch HP laptop instead of a $2,800 MacBook Pro, has unleashed the whole 'Are Macs Expensive?' debate again. I'm diving in with a pretty exhaustive comparison of the MacBook Pro against machines from Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Sony that were as comparably configured as I could manage. The conclusion: High-end laptops tend to carry high-end prices, whether their operating system hails from Cupertino or Redmond. And the MacBook Pro wasn't the priciest of the systems I compared." We looked at this question, not in as much depth, a couple of years back.

Some anonymous person wrote in to say that Google has relaunched and rebranded GrandCentral as "Google Voice." The article says it will "revolutionize telephones. It unifies your phone numbers, transcribes your voice mail, blocks telemarketers and elevates text messages to first-class communication citizens." Sadly, the voicemail didn't integrate very nicely w/ my phone back in the day, so I guess I should give it a shot.