I think you raise a few valid concerns (unlike some of the people who replied to you already).

For starters, who cares about all the "military grade encryption!" and "practically unhackable!" propaganda? If there's anything we should have learned by now, it's that just about everything out there that's computerized has been or is subject to being hacked into. If Google or anyone else wants to pretend a network connecting driver-less cars together is at no risk of a hack, just because of the level of encryption used? Then I'd have to ask why just about every credit card out there has been downloaded by hackers at least once in the last couple years? Are you say nobody else ever though to use military grade encryption and all along, that's been the whole issue?!

There's going to be a lot of motivation to hack such a network, too. (Think of all the people who'd love to have a secret "mode" rigged up on their personal vehicle so if they press a button, their car suddenly takes priority over everyone else on the road and forces them to yield to it!)

I will say, though -- I'm far less swayed by your argument about "owning your mobility". I think anyone buying or leasing a vehicle is already doing that, regardless of how the driving is accomplished. You're expressing your freedom by telling your car where to go and when, just like you are when you get behind the wheel and drive it there. If you're referring more to wanting to drive off-road? Well, I think there's going to continue to be a demand for manually driven vehicles for off-road use (like Jeeps) -- where they'll probably operate in a driver-less mode OR manual control. But statistically., the majority of people who buy an off-road vehicle never even use it off of the public streets ..... so it's truthfully only a niche market who cares about that capability.

Yeah, no doubt the earbuds don't cost nearly as much to manufacture as the sale price on them. There's just not THAT much to a pair of them, no matter who sells them. But to be fair, the big difference in sound quality of the more expensive ones comes largely due to money invested up-front in R&Ding a specific pair. (You can bet companies like Skullcandy don't get sound engineers as deeply involved with the production process as Sennheiser does.) They have to roll the development costs into the product price too.

I think part of the problem is, people simply have no idea how many other people are calling in with issues on the same product!

At one of my old jobs, I remember constantly getting called on by the boss to help with his HP printer issues -- both in the office and sometimes at home. He'd volunteer to drive me out to his place over lunch (and usually buy me lunch as compensation) to take a look at it for him.

Truthfully, most of his issues were bugs that MANY, MANY people using multiple HP wireless printers were running into, as evidenced by Google searches on it. He used to complain and complain about how long he had to wait on hold to talk to reps at HP, who would then spend HOURS remote-controlling in to his computer(s) to try to iron everything out. Yet he was sure these issues had to be fairly unique to his environment. He wouldn't accept the idea that lots of people experienced these issues, because in his mind, "HP wouldn't be able to afford to keep the products on store shelves if this was happening to too many people."

What I don't think he realized was that yes, that's exactly why he had to wait on hold for an hour or more each time, and struggle through tech support with language barriers. There were that many people calling in with issues! Apparently though, when you're the size of HP, it's still more cost-effective for the company to keep cranking out printers and all-in-one devices that have known software problems, and just take the calls as they come in. (I imagine the money is mostly made on the ink anyway, and HP is fine with people wasting ink and paper trying to get test or network config. pages to print, in an attempt to fix them when they quit talking on the network.)

I don't think your example really proves much?

Sennheiser is a fairly large company that sells a lot of higher-end audio gear. It's quite possible they take a loss supporting the cheaper products in their line-up, but consider that an overall acceptable expense if it makes happy customers who eventually step up to their higher-end products.

The real problems with support come in with the companies who really only specialize in the cheaper items. Say you primarily sell 4-port USB hubs and generic 3-button mice for laptops? Or say you specialize in selling 3rd. party replacements for cellphone batteries? It's all a customer can really expect, IMO, to get a prompt exchange or refund for a clearly defective item within the stated warranty period. A toll-free number to get live support on these things isn't financially sensible.

Customer support forums are great, no matter WHO provides the solutions, as long as solutions come in a timely manner.

I think that's where each company needs to look at what it's doing for support, and using whichever method suits it best.

For example, I've been on a few forums for specialized music hardware or software where it was highly structured. You weren't really allowed to post messages helping out the next user. Rather, you had to post specific questions and wait for one of their support people to reply, as though it was an official "trouble ticket".

This gave a much worse result than a forum where the company provide no direct help at all, IMO. The official staff was slow in responding, and it usually required multiple emails back and forth as they asked for all sorts of details the company apparently made a procedure of collecting before assisting a person.

I think what USUALLY works best is an open forum where everyone can assist each other, but official employees are tasked with keeping up with the forum topics and interjecting assistance as well. But I can't tell you how often I've gotten useful advice from the Apple Support Forums, even though nobody from Apple gave any official help at all in there. When you sell a product that's very widely used (like Apple does), almost anything you come across has also been observed by somebody else. The forums help get those people communicating with each other and raise awareness of an issue. Other readers quickly chime in if they have any suggestions or also saw the problem -- and before long, there's usually an answer. When it's clearly a problem that's insurmountable without a bug-fix from Apple, there's always the option to file an official bug report with Apple's online bug-tracker, and that usually gets it corrected for you by the next software or firmware release.

It's also true that sometimes, I've found the users of a product who are interested enough in it to frequent forums in the first place will know MORE about it than the staff at the company who sells it! So just calling in for support is inferior to asking on a public forum in those cases.

Initially, it's impressive looking -- but as others said, the fact it gives you no more vertical resolution than you get with many of today's laptop screens is kind of a "non starter" for me. When web browsing (which, let's face it, almost all of us do quite a bit of, no matter what other task(s) we claim a given computer was purchased for), you're always scrolling pages up and down. I wouldn't spend this much on a display that didn't let me see a single bit more information on a web site without scrolling down.

Same thing tends to happen for tasks like photo editing. Your typical photos are going to have a lot more vertical resolution in pixels than this monitor can display at a time.

I dislike the bezel between multiple monitors too -- but I don't think anyone's really offered a worthy substitute yet. (I have a pair of 27" LG monitors side-by-side on a monitor stand right now, and at least with this arrangement - I can go full screen to play a game while keeping the main Steam window open and visible on the second display the whole time. Same with other apps that were coded to work best in a full screen mode. You can do that and still have another screen to work with.) Cost-wise, these displays were only about $249 each plus $49 for the stand from NewEgg. So $550-ish to have the whole thing? I'll learn to live with the bezels before paying the $1000-ish prices for most higher resolution 30" displays out there and the like.

Well, one real obvious reason the "MS hopes people will balance the Surface's cost against the cost of a work laptop plus a personal tablet" claim is false is this:

Employees don't pay for their work-supplied computer! And by contrast, your employer isn't financially obligated to pay for your personal computer or tablet needs.

If the best argument for a new Surface is the idea it replaces both a work PC and a home tablet ... then they've got nothing. The rise in employer-supplied computers actually helps drive the interest in individuals buying personal tablets, IMO. There's a lot of stuff people can't really do with a work supplied machine. I've seen some that are a nightmare just to get on a home wireless network because they're so customized to work with internal network authentication and an encrypted VPN tunnel. If you're even granted local administrator rights on the system in the first place, you're still going to be cautious about installing games and other software. Meanwhile, these same people are often going to feel like they can't justify spending the $'s on a second laptop when they already carry one around for work -- so they consider the iPad or other tablets as good, cheaper alternatives.

....your intruder is a deaf guy!

I, too, spend years living in a pretty rough neighborhood. (Two houses down from me, someone ran an old Chevy through the middle of a guy's living room on purpose, because he wasn't happy with the drugs they sold him. A few houses down the street, the other direction, I heard a single gunshot -- and found out the next day the guy had an argument with his wife and decided to make sure he had the last word, using his shotgun.)

In 6 years there, though? I never had anyone break in once. (Some teenagers did steal my lawnmower that was sitting on the back porch, but I heard later that was going on all over town as a group of kids figured out they could make some quick money reselling the engines to repair shops.) I solved that by chaining up its replacement with a bike chain to the railing going up my back porch steps.

The whole time, I was known as the "computer guy" in the neighborhood and had expensive systems set up at home. So why wasn't I ever targeted?

I didn't waste time or money on an alarm system. (Heck, my next-door neighbor had ADT and he was still burglarized twice.) The biggest thing that helped in my case was making good friends with my neighbors on both sides of my place and letting them know if I was going to be gone for any length of time. Most burglaries really are "inside jobs", at least in the sense that the burglar knows something about the situation. If they get the idea that someone's usually home at your place, they'll choose a different target. (Most thieves aren't thrilled about the idea of having to commit armed robberies instead. They'd rather not up the ante quite that high.....) Additionally, if they get the idea your neighbors actually watch out for you -- they'll go elsewhere. Ideally, they want a place where they can park a vehicle and load it up with your stuff, and nobody will notice or care.

I agree that some cameras can't hurt though. If you're into computers anyway, surely you can rig up a few wi-fi webcams with night vision to watch over your vehicle in your driveway and so forth, and automate it so it only records when it sees motion. Cheap insurance. Probably also helps if you have a loud, barking dog -- but I didn't even do that.

I had a collection of somewhere slightly over 250-260 commercial music CDs (about half of which I sold off last year o various online web-sites who bought used CDs).

The sites doing the buying were extremely picky (to the point where they'd refuse to pay for a disc, even if it was the exact album they said they wanted, if its ISBN number didn't match the exact one they were after), and I was billed for replacement jewel cases in several instances, simply because the ones I provided with the CDs had small cracks in them.

Not a single disc I sold them was refused or returned for failure to play or for skipping though.

Meanwhile, I've had absolutely no issues playing any of the remaining discs in my collection. (I had to re-rip many of them just a few months ago, when I discovered a lot of the MP3 rips I made years earlier had some issues.)

What I can say, though, is, I've been very good about always putting my CDs back in the jewel cases whenever I finished playing one, and they all sit in a big, revolving CD storage tower in the house. I have to wonder if some of these complaints of "edge rot" and "bronzing" of the media and so forth are with discs people left sitting in hot cars in the summer, didn't put back in the cases often, etc. ?

Why did a company like LucasArts license their IP to EA instead of to a more respectable company with better labor and business practices?

I believe Maxis sold its IP for the Sim titles to EA long before EA developed the bad reputation it has today, so that's kind of understandable. But surely, there are cases where holders of IP that's desirable to obtain for video games could sell to a more ethical business.

To be honest, the case cited is the very reason I haven't given Blizzard any of my money for its more recent titles.

I know I'm just one guy who the company doesn't even notice. But the fact the company took issue with the BNetD thing and fought over it in court sent a clear signal to me that I better send my hard-earned dollars elsewhere when choosing computer game purchases for entertainment.

It simply doesn't seem like a good value proposition to pay the asking price for these games that require central servers to function, AND to know the company doesn't believe in letting 3rd. parties build or host alternate options.

I would have really liked to play Diablo 3 or Starcraft II, especially because as a Mac OS X user, my gaming options are pretty limited to begin with. But I'm not a "hard core gamer" anyway. I'm too old for that and have too many other demands on my free time. I just want to know that if I pay $40-50 for a game, I can keep it around and play it whenever I like -- even if that's a number of years after it was purchased, and won't find it's become unusable because the manufacturer decided it was time to kill it off.

as one more example? I work in I.T. as a computer support analyst. What does that title really mean? In my situation, it means I'm the only computer guy in the office, both for our office (where all of the finance people reside, as well as H.R., the company president, and another floor of "creative" folks who work directly with our clients), and for a second office in another city nearby. (That office has only about 10 employees, and a couple of them generally work from home, so they don't need a lot of attention. But it's my job to run down there when something does go wrong or needs upgrading/changing.)

Our company has several other offices around the country, and we have two more I.T. guys who generally do what I do. All of us work together as a team to handle incoming trouble tickets for any of the offices, but it makes the most sense for us to do the vast majority of the support for the offices we're located in or close to.

When you factor in that our little group also does all the support for an additional 100 or so people who work freelance for us on random projects (they all get their own company email accounts and so forth), I'd say we're actually stretched pretty darn thin. Things would quickly deteriorate if any one of us was cut out of the picture. (We know this by watching what happens when someone leaves on vacation for a week or two.)

Despite that? I can assure you that all of us "waste some time" on the internet, posting silly things on Facebook, reading the latest tech. news and so on. At any given time, one of us is probably coming in an hour late or taking an extra long lunch here or there, too. You know what though? We are ALSO dedicated to getting things done correctly and in a timely manner. There's so much stress and "I need this yesterday!" that comes in random bursts, you can't reasonably expect a person to handle that without compensating with some downtime or laziness mixed in. As long as nobody tries to micro-manage us - it all comes together pretty well for us. When we come in late, it's because we have a pretty good grip on the ebb and flow of the I.T. issues at hand and feel confident it's a time window where we don't have to be sitting in front of a desk to keep things going. We're also known to take tickets and fix issues on a Saturday or Sunday night, even though none of us are officially "on call" -- simply because one of us may not have anything better to do at that moment in time. We'd rather knock an issue out than have it hanging over our heads on Monday, sometimes. We also may NOT take those tickets, because we have family lives and want to get away from work sometimes. It's more productive than I think we'd be if we were micro-managed and someone was actually ordered to be "on call" on weekends to take those incoming tickets, etc.

Personally, I have to go with New Hope, Episode IV. That's the one that started it all for me, when I saw it in a movie theater with my family back in '77 and it was a life changing event for me. I wound up collecting nearly every action figure and play-set Kenner released, and made new friends over a shared interest in those toys and the movies.

I think what bothers me the most about the prequels, as I look back on it now, is how much detailed CGI was stuffed into them. Episode IV, by comparison, was so simplistic yet creative. Using the desert as the backdrop worked perfectly for Tatooine, without needing a bunch of rendered, computerized imagery and actors/actresses super-imposed over the top of all of it. To me, no matter how "cool" they make new Star Wars movies look with the latest technology, it'll always be something you look at and kind of expect, given the budget, the fan base of the franchise, etc. It's far more amazing to me to re-watch that first episode from 1977 and see how well most of it still holds up today, with only the relatively limited tools at their disposal back then.

It constantly irritates me when I see people installing all sorts of junk simply because they can't be bothered to READ what's on the screen, right in front of them. Thanks to the proliferation of "free" software for Windows (as opposed to true freeware), the installation programs often ask you if you'd like to ALSO install one of several other questionable toolbars, add-ons or other utilities, with an "opt in" default for each prompt. Really, there's no secret here.... It tells you right on the screen what it wants to install, and you simply de-select a check-mark to skip it. But people blow right through those prompts, clicking as fast as they can find the button, and then wonder where the "Super Cool MegaSearch" toolbar came from that keeps popping up ad banners while they surf the web.