I save on my bill by simply not having a mobile phone. When I live my workplace i don't want to be bothered by work When I leave my home I want to get away from the phone. as far as other functionality that "Smart phones" bring If I need a map I use (wait for it) a Paper map! you can get nice State maps for free at state ran tourist info booths As far as browsing, email, calendering and all of these other features if I think I am going to need those while I am not close to my desk I grab my laptop bag I can do everything with it a smart phone can at a place with free wireless for the price of a cup of coffee and in the process have a Screen that is readable ad a useful keyboard.

choosing mainline Ubuntu is most of your problem if you would have went with one of the smaller Ubuntu derivitives such as Linux Mint you would have had the Java plug ins working at install In the mean time Ubuntu which was at one time one of the netter desktop distributions is quickly sliding down to the bottom of the barrel in terms of hardware support and usability. I now would not wish Ubuntu on my worst enemy.

Big Business continues to kiss the Chinese Governments butt out of fear of loosing there cheep sweatshop labor. Nothing to see here wake me up when McAfee makes a Free Tibet version of there product. or GM Signs the Dali lama as a spokes person.

A "Piracy" warning while downloading Free software.

I hated unity as well. Than I tried Gnome shell than suddenly Unity was decent.

'Chrome on Ubuntu and Chrome on Linux is a better experience than Chrome on any other platform [i.e. Windows and Mac].' he almost acts like Ubuntu is something other than Yet another Linux distro. with that statement.

if your woried about the data on an old drive simply dismantle the drive. The platers are fun for craft projects the rare earth magnets are fun toys. (cant swipe my data if i am useing it to keep my table clean)

The university of Wisconsin Whitewater has a textbook rental service. http://www.uww.edu/StdRsces/textbook/index.html the rental fees and cost of useing te service are part of the seg. fees