It's actually been awhile since I've installed or used OpenOffice...I've been using Google Docs myself mostly and for family they've all been running old copies of OpenOffice forever. I'd originally dismissed LibreOffice as a cumbersome-named knockoff and OO was working for me so I just ignored it. My wife does have some complaints she's run into with OO; is LO more actively maintained, faster/more efficient, or have imrpoved features over OO now? Is it worth changing over or upgrading?

Ya know what I'd really like - instead of either of these packages chasing MS Office 2003, I'd like to see something like what Firefox (and now Chrome) did to the browser product space, but for office productivity suites. Where's my small, lightweight, and fast word processor, spreadsheet app, or presentation software that is straightforward to get into but also has the pro features I might need, too. But not buried under tons of menus, nor ribbonized. Where's the innovation that we didn't know we even needed? Maybe Apple's office software does some of that, but I've never used it. But I always remembered OpenOffice feeling very bulky and dated. It worked, was better than shelling out $200 for MS Office, but didn't really improve on what it was replacing.

Ugh, completely wrong. I'd much rather go to market.android.com from *any* computer, log into my google account and I can push whatever apps I want to my phone directly from there. It Just Works. Automatically and in this new "cloud" thing that is all the rage since Apple touted it. Why would I ever want to be forced to use my PC tied to a local application install to manage my phone?

I was under the impression that Google Wallet with NFC wasn't available on any US phone aside from maybe the Nexus S on Sprint? You'll still be able to hack on Wallet to a VZW Nexus just like you'll have to hack it on to any other unsupported phone with NFC. Honestly though I would expect eventually this year we'll see Wallet available in the Market to any compatible phone.

If you're not doing anything wrong you don't have anything to worry about!

Hah I envision a feed like in the movie Speed. Look! His hand jumped back across the keyboard suddenly!

The problem with Facetime is you're locked in to Apple products. I really with Google would push Google Talk with video chat or Google+ Messenger via mobile a lot more. The tech is there and it works, across platforms, but hardly anyone knows about it it seems.

Otherwise I've found that for pretty much any mainstream app there's parity between the iOS and Android phone apps. Tablets may be a different story but I'm sure that'll get closer, too.

That's the whole point - with streaming options I mostly have to do work in order to watch what I want to watch. What a lot of the pundits and "next new thing" guys forget is maybe, just maybe, people still *do* want that passive experience, too. Sometimes I *do* just want to flip on, channel surf, and settle on whatever I might find. Sometimes I want background programming while I'm doing something else where I don't have to really pay attention. Sometimes I want reruns that I've seen before, but without having to actively pause if I go to the kitchen, or pay attention if I haven't seen it before. OK, make something like stumbleupon for web video, but make it work.

It may be 2011 I'm betting it's because the DVR GUI is at least as old as 2005. I've had the same model of shitty Motorola digital cable box for both Comcast and now a local cable company, and it's the exact same interface, style, and GUI mechanics as when we signed up in 2005. And it seemed dated then.

I might argue that the Google/Motorola partnership could make inroads to the cablebox problem with some sort of slick GoogleTV DVR thing, but you still have to rely on the cable companies to update their hardware. Why would they do that if their 10 year old digital boxes are still working and people can't get an alternative?

I can't look it up for specifics right now but your list looks like it would probably match pretty close for the US, too. I'm pretty sure we have all of Family Guy available, though, or at least it was awhile back. But that's one of the other joys of Netflix streaming - just because something is there at one point doesn't mean it'll be there the next time you look. But all in all, yeah - Netflix rarely has but a few recent hits, and rarely has 5+ year old any first runs. Oh, it'll have the 5 sequels that went straight to video, but good luck having the actual real movie available.

Maybe they should instead focus on fixing their piece of crap existing mobile apps first. I can only really speak to the Android app although I've read in the past that the iPhone version has lots of complaints, too. To say the Android Facebook app is completely awful in every way is putting it too nicely. A few revisions back they did away with the native feel altogether; now the feed appears to be some sort of embedded web view into the mobile website. It is slow to scroll, doesn't always register clicks correctly (because you're clicking on hyperlinks instead of click areas), and will randomly change at Facebook's whim. There's a weird refresh/scrolling glitch where you scroll down and suddenly the "updating" graphic shows at the top and the screen clips and jumps. Other times there's a refresh bug where it will just constantly refresh - you'll scroll down through the feed and it will jump to the top repeatedly until you exit out and back in.

There are UI inconsistencies all over the place. There's the main newsfeed which is the crappy web view. Going to a profile brings up the old native UI. Sometimes clicking through something (still within the Facebook realm) drops you to the mobile site instead. Tagging people works sometimes, sometimes it doesn't. It's always been slow in general - half the time images won't load correctly, or start loading and then stop, and they are always slow to work with anyway. It's a mess.

I really just want to be able to follow the newsfeed in a fast reliable manner and have the same basic features as the main site. But in a native app - HTML5 may be the future but it doesn't give the same experience as the native UIs. As big as Facebook is and I assume a lot of people use their mobile apps, but it completely falls down compared to what Google has done with their Google+ app. I think the mobile app space will be the downfall of Facebook - the harder it becomes to use their mobile apps the less I'm likely to use it and instead focus on other social networks.

On top of that probably 80% of the stuff I buy isn't available locally anyway. Sure, Best Buy or Walmart might have something close to what I'm looking for, but at least with tech stuff I usually am looking for a specific model or something.

Where can I sign up for that? Anecdotal-ly I think quite a lot of people begrudgingly do their jobs because it provides money to pay the bills, not because they'd do it for free.

More and more it sounds like whiners don't want there to be a situation where some parties are faster and better than others.

I've left a couple companies, one of them twice, where I enjoyed working with the people was immediately around but due to acquisitions or change in corporate management I felt the overall company wasn't a good fit anymore. In all of these cases, and even now when I'm looking at what is out there, I ask myself a simple question: are they loyal to me? Unless it's a small company that is still small I have no doubts that they would get rid of me at any point it made business sense. So why should I not look out for #1, too? Plus, there's the bus situation. As much as we'd like to think we're indispensable, if something were to happen to someone things will be a mess for awhile but everyone left will find a way to make it work. If it's a better deal for me then business will go on.

I admit, that part is cool. And I *can* listen to entire albums on there. But it seems very limited unless I want to pay, and I don't want to pay. I can't use it on my work PC (two strikes against since FB is blocked along with no streaming allowed!) and there's not a mobile free version. I could see it as a testing ground for new albums but if I really like the music then I'll purchase that, and I still have to search about specific artists or songs to "discover" anything.