Right on! I totally agree. The G1 has a great layout of keyboard and hardware buttons. It really irks me to see so many of the upcoming Android phones lacking a hardware keyboard. I don't want an iPhone clone with only one button and a virtual keyboard. It's one of the reasons I chose an Android-based phone in the first place.

There are some great Android phones coming down the pike, but I wish there were more with a physical keyboard and buttons. I have a G1 and wish HTC would come out with a "next generation" version with essentially the same layout but larger screen, more memory, better processor, etc. Getting rid of the call and end buttons arranged linearly at the bottom of the set seems a mistake. One example of lost functionality is the three-finger reboot available by holding down the call, menu, and end buttons simultaneously.

I believe the poster meant that the Missouri River, near Missoula, MT, contained a dam that broke and flooded Eastern Washington. I'm don't recall all the details from a PBS show I saw, but this is essentially correct.

It's possible for a particular quartz watch to have much higher accuracy than the +/- 15 sec/month average. It's mostly the luck of the draw without some method of internal temperature compensation. For a great deal of information on high-accuracy quartz watches, check out the High-end Quartz watch forum at http://forums.watchuseek.com/forumdisplay.php?f=9.

Actually, very few quartz watches are this accurate. The typical quartz watch is only accurate to about +-15 seconds/month, unless it syncs to a time signal broadcast. Thermo-compensated quartz watches can be as accurate as +-5 sec/year, though, with no need for a time sync.

Give FBReader a try. I've read a couple dozen books using it so far. It allows for page turning via screen swipes or the volume control, which make it easier to use than my last ebook reader--a Palm TX. As long as you can find a way to convert an ebook file into the ePub format, you'll be good to go.

I've read that Bluetooth file transfers and phone-to-phone connections are a part of Android 2.0. It's also going to be in an upcoming release of Cyanogen's Donut-based CyanogenMod ROM.

I've been running Vista on a Thinkpad T61p for about a year and a half with no significant problems, crashes, or performance problems. Upgrading to Windows 7 seems like it would be a waste of time and money for me or anyone else with a stable and well-performing Vista installation. The improvements in Windows 7 aren't significant or compelling enough to justify the change.

Whenever we get a story like this, I see a ton of back-and-forth between the "LCD is fine for reading" and the "LCD sucks for reading, go e-Ink" crowds. It seems to me that this is a "to each their own" situation. For whatever reason, some of us enjoy and have no problem with reading on small LCD screens. For others, this is an impossible choice. It sounds obvious, but there isn't a best device, I'd say. So trying to convince the other side that their reading preference is the best isn't going to go very far. I hope Google (and others) makes their content easily available on every sort of reading platform. Choice is a good thing.

Trekker, Trekkie...call it what you like. It doesn't matter to me. Just a convenient short-hand for "I like Star Trek a lot and own way too many communicator models." Easier to type, too...

I'm a hard-core Trekker and have been dreading the oft-rumored "Star Trek: 90210" about the Academy days of the TOS crew. But Abrams managed to skirt most of the major pitfalls of introducing the characters during their early years. I was grinning like a fool during the tie-ins to the old series. And, for the first time in years, I was at a movie where the crowd actually applauded at the end of the show and hung around to enjoy the credit music. Pretty darned cool.

This is exactly what I've heard should be happening, as well. Global warming would evaporate more of the ocean's water, which falls on Antarctica as snow, resulting in more ice.

So would you also say someone who listens to music in a car isn't serious about music? Can I only listen to music in an acoustically-perfect environment to be serious about it? Interesting viewpoint.

That's something I don't hear talked about much--the health affects caused by smoking pot, as in smoke and tars being sucked into the lungs. I'm assuming it's as bad as tobacco? Then even if pot is legalized, it's still something that should be avoided if you don't want to increase your risk of lung cancer and heart disease.