Are you SURE that's the only reason anyone uses it? I use it, because within the free tier, especially with the referral bonuses I've received, I have enough space to use Dropbox with a myriad of apps that support it for syncing.

Sounds like you had it almost as bad as me. Took six days to get my TiVo activated (TiVo support is really great, by the way, but they can't fix Comcast's problems). I had two tech visits, I drove to the local retail store four times, and went through six cable cards, plus had to wake one tech up who fell asleep in my house!

The truth is, there's no way I want to have just one address. Here's what I use:

1) A very personal address that very few people have, but for close friends and family. I wouldn't even tell you what service I use, let alone accidentally give it out in a public place. I'm super protective of it, it's one that does do notifications on my iPhone, etc., and remarkably is still spam free. To be honest, I even have some family members that don't use it. I told them I was changing my email address and gave them a different one, since they can't stop sending joke chain emails with 200 people in the CC list.

2) A somewhat personal address that I give out to business contacts that aren't work-related (I use my corporate email account for those obviously). Pretty much spam free. It's the one that largely gets the Linkedin invites, the Plaxo spam, etc, but largely hasn't been sold off to spammers.

3) An address I use for websites that I reasonably trust. Amazon. Slashdot. Things that you sign up for once, and then have to opt out of whatever stupid newsletters you get by default. Rarely gets spam.

4) An address I use for websites I reasonably don't trust. Something where I want some content on a site but don't want them to have a way to contact me. Not loaded on a phone or computer, if I need to look for an account activation email, I hit web mail, wade through the incessant spam, find what I need, log back out.

5) Work email. Not much I can do about that. Loaded on my work computer, and on my work provided phone. Gets too much email. Very little spam though, since I use address #3 or #4 when signing up for web sites, even if they are work related.

That said, while it was a little work setting up, it's very easy to manage. Email #1 is checked constantly. #2 and #5 regularly. #3 occasionally, and most stuff is automatically filtered away (Amazon order receipts into a folder, etc). #4 is very popular with viagra sites and porno sites, since it's the address captured by sites that turn around and sell your email.

Amazon isn't likely to sell your email, they'd rather have you all to yourself.

There's other things you can do. If you use Apple products, they make it very easy to hook your phone number and every email address you own (iCloud or otherwise) to iMessage. But you don't have to. If you have multiple addresses, make sure just the private ones are hooked up to iMessage. For SMS, I have my cell published sparingly, most people get my Google Voice number, and those texts are reviewed less frequently.

But, email is broken. For sure. That's a lot of work just because I don't want to buy sugar pills labeled as Viagra from unknown sources and am comfortable in my manhood enough to not need to try to change anything geometrically.

Hi. I'm a tablet. I don't run flash. I'm a huge, huge part of the web traffic out there. My cousin the phone is also a huge part. He also doesn't run flash. So regardless of what flash brings to the table, people have begun to move on. Because I'm that important.

True. Plus, on top of that, Best Buy has a price match with Amazon, and unlike some of the price matches scams I've seen through the years, it's easy to do, and requires no manager involvement. You show them the price on your phone at Amazon.com and as long as it's sold BY Amazon (and not a third party), they match the price instantly.

Sure, with tax it's higher overall, but this is about as reasonable as possible.

Cameras wouldn't have worked. Ask Ritz or Wolf Camera. Aside from photography stores in larger cities catering to higher end prosumer/professionals (think B&H or Adorama), and Best Buy, that business has all but disappeared from retail.

I would think that's only half true. I have a first or second generation Intel iMac, don't even remember. It's "About Mac" calls it a 24-inch Mid 2007, so it's 6+ years old already. Core 2 Duo with 2mb of RAM. It's sitting in my office running a few things I can't be bothered to worry about where they run from, Plex Media Server, for one. It's running 10.9.1 presently. A bit sluggish, sometimes I wish I had stayed one version back (but not 3), but other times I realized I'd normally have given this thing away years ago, except for some dumb reason it keeps working.

Sounds like Amazon will be able to support the X pretty easily. In fairness, this nugget was hidden away in the place we're all least likely to check. In the actual article itself!

The three off brands I have seem fine. Two are from mainstream vendors, the third is a no name Chinese brand. They all charge seemingly as fast as the Apple charger, and about twice as fast as with a 1 amp iPhone charger. In fact, one charger two USB ports, one 2 amp, the other 1 amp, and I can tell the difference.

Ok they just look like AA batteries, and provide 2400 mAH each, which is isn't even impressive compared to a good AA battery. But saying there's no use for being able to charge 4 iPads doesn't begin to cover how the original suggestion of using a device that provides 4800 or 9600 mAH at 1 amp is off target. Neither will charge ONE ipad at full speed or to 100%. This device can charge an ipad, iPhone and iPod without breaking a sweat, or at least it would have.

If you wanted to find something cheaper, you can, but not for $20, especially if you actually want to charge an ipad, and do it at regular charging speed.

So look, if you can't find the value in something like this, that's great, but it doesn't mean $20 and 4800mah works in all situations.

I don't see how what you linked to was well enough. It doesn't have enough juice to charge an iPad, and has a weak enough output to charge at half the speed on top of that. It also can't charge more than one device at a time, and has questionable recharge time for it's own batteries. For many uses, including mine, it's not NEARLY well enough. I travel with enough supplies to charge two iPads via wall power at full speed, and enough battery juice to charge one of them outright off battery. Two AA batteries really doesn't do much of anything for me.

iPads ship with a 10 watt power adapter specifically to allow them to charge faster, given the massive size of the battery. Yes, they highly, highly take advantage of it. Even iPhone will charge about twice as fast with a 1 amp charger versus a standard USB connection.

Not with any of three chargers I use.

Way to link to something just under 1/5th the capacity and with inferior electronics that pushes out a maximum 1amp, you know, a little under half what's required to charge the iPad at regular charging speed. But yeah, it's cheaper.

There are many chargers providing 2 amps out.