I used to have this problem, too, until I discovered that little white collar on the wire. When not in use, simply slide it all the way up. This prevents the majority of the knotting. Or, just get a pair that occupy 4 dimensional space -- that way it's impossible for them to get tangled up!

It certainly "feels" less responsive. Particularly when scrolling through a page then subsequently stopping and clicking a link, etc. A 3-5 second 'spinning ball of death' is not uncommon when traversing any given page.

Thanks for this comment. Obviously brilliant.

Not trying to sound like a fanboi... However, I have hundreds of data sheets for various microprocessors, IC's, power supplies, embedded API's, 5 years worth of emails, etc. Spotlight indexes them all beautifully, and access is very quick, only a few seconds to pull up all references. I believe spotlight will even index network attached storage although I could be wrong.

Roadnav is a fairly good open source turn-by-turn nav solution that uses TIGER data. Check it out: http://roadnav.sourceforge.net/