I put a rider on my home insurance policy which covers all my *personal use* electronic equipment. I can't remember how much it is a year, but it's not too much. But - If you use any of the equipment for business you have to get a business equipment policy (homeowners insurance typically won't cover anything used for business). I have about US$25K in various computers, external drives, wireless, (etc., etc.) equipment and my policy is US$220/year. YMMV

BTW - You want to make *sure* it is a *replacement cost* policy or they'll use a formula and pay you the "used" value, so if you have a 5 year old computer (for example) you'll get a fraction of the replacement cost. This is for both home owners and business. A friend had a house fire (aluminum wiring) and (for example) her washer was 9 or 10 years old - They gave her something like US$35 to replace it since she didn't have a *replacement cost* policy.

The pilots knew (or should have known) that the pitot tubes were suspect. There was a maintenance bulletin out for the pitot tubes and a replacement program was under way. They were being replaced on all of the aircraft because known failures had led to a design change to fix the known problem. It was a situation where the failure rate wasn't critical and there are two pitot tubes, so it wasn't a "ground the fleet" scenario. I'm retired, never flew for a living, and haven't flown for quite a few years (But I do still follow things), but I got my ATP license back in 1976 so I'm not a novice. Back when this happened I remember reading the bulletin about the pitot tubes. Also see "Airspeed Inconsistency": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447 - So, the probability is both pitot tubes were iced. This led to some erroneous instrument readings such as air speed and the pilots freaked out.

One other thing - I keep seeing people here talking about how the pilots should have looked at their ground speed and known there was a problem. Air speed has nothing to do with ground speed. Technically you can be flying with a ground speed of zero, if the winds aloft at the aircraft's altitude are fast enough. A stall is in relation to actual aircraft air speed, which has nothing to do with the ground speed of the aircraft.

I can see that. More and more people I know are spending more and more time on Facebook - Mostly just idling watching the status updates and stuff scroll by. I can even see it with people who are long time visitors to some of my forum web sites. These are people I know and have known for years. Lots of times I see them "idling" on both one of my sites and Facebook. The face of computing to the world is changing significantly which, in my opinion, is why so many people are now buying "appliances" such as iPads. I don't have any numbers, but my bet is while more and more people are "going online" every year, people are searching for things less and less in search engines such as Google and Bing. This isn't so much true of people here, but rather the population of the world in general want Twitter and Facebook (both to me are pretty useless). I'm not saying I think search is dying a fast death, but I do think their relevance to most people is slowly fading.

Or so they say. I tend to agree with one of the ARS posters: "Am I mistaken, are are all the numbers out from antivirus vendors, all people with a monetary stake in finding more infections rather than less? I do not recall seeing an independent verification of any count; did I miss one? Every time I read about an "independent" source "confirming" the numbers, it's another vendor with an obvious bias--the same vendors who have been exaggerating Mac threats for the past 7 years and more. I mean, if Fox News reported on how bad Obama was doing at something, and then was "confirmed" by WND, which was then corrected by NewsBusters which said it was worse than anyone had reported--well, would we really be giving them all much credence? An article I'd like to see is one that explains why any of the numbers any of these vendors has released are reliable and to what degree, with evidence to support that. Does such an article exist, and if so, where? And if not, then why are we trusting obviously biased sources?"

BBC - BBS - The Documentary - Find it. It's really good. 8 episodes. Some of it is on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnSz-Hb9LQY

I've had one drive crash in the last 10 years and it was on a 2008 iMac. Replaced drive, booted from the Install disk, and the Time machine backup worked perfectly. Everything was restored. I also have a clone drive (I use CCC) which I update every other week. I actually expected the Time Machine backup to fail. I don't know why, but I did. I expected to end up using the clone drive for recovery. I will say that I believe Time Machine is only good for a full restore by booting from the Install disk (which I guess now are a thing of the past...).

Good lord. I remember the days when lots of drug stores had tube testers and sold vacuum tubes. Talk about the end of a era. That may show how old I am, but I remember my dad "fixing" the TV (or his amplifier for his "music box" and the music world was still in mono) when a tube went out. If it was an uncommon tube he knew a fellow who owned an electronics parts store. They had a real good tube tester and all the "unique" parts you could need. Back then repairs were board level. My, how times have changed.

There are so many different Android devices and such fragmentation of the Android "OS" that saying Android has surpassed iOS means nothing.

It is so rare that I buy any device (or even furniture, for that matter) which is perfect that I'm surprised when I buy something, anything, which I have absolutely no "Had they...", or "They should have..." comments. I read the article before it was posted here. It's just another bit of "journalism" to fill some space. As I look around my home, there are few things I can not come up with some complaint about, no matter how small. I bought an iPad 2 but read about the "next" iPad a day later and the prediction of a better display. So - I called Apple and cancelled the order. It was too late. BUT - They paid for return shipping and refunded my money. When this iPad came out I pre-ordered. So many of my friends with an iPad liked them so much I was pretty convinced I'd like it and I do. The stuff in the article is what it is. You can't please everyone all of the time. Me? No problems. WiFi - Works fine. Charges up fine. It does everything I *expect* it to do, and does it well. It may not be *perfect*, but there are few things in my life which I have bought that were *perfect*, and being in my 60's that's saying something.

With parts from where?