I know it's common to bash MS on slashdot. I tried out a Windows Phone recently... Before grasping it I had a cocky smirk on my face thinking the phone would be complete trash. (I owned two windows CE phones before - hating them and getting rid of them quickly). I was pleasantly surprised using the phone and think it could be a real winner in my honest opinion. I have used Android/BlackBerry and iPhone and although the iPhone is a bunch of fun - I think the Windows Phone gets straight to the point and it's very (very!) responsive. I think Microsoft has a pretty good product here. Try one out before you bash. It may not be 'the best' but it's pretty respectable.

Taking bets on how long before a USB powered vacuum cleaner comes out of Asia!

What Google 900Mhz announcement? Please, don't tell me to 'Google it' ....

feeling is mutual

Just me, or is Google getting some (somewhat deserving) bad press lately on a number of things? I try and use Bing quite often (just to be different - same reason I won't buy an iPhone, but do own several Macs), but I find I get the results I'm after with Google more so. I find everyday search results with Bing to be meaningful and useful. I find I have a better time with Google when I'm searching for technical things. Considering Microsoft was very late to the game by taking web search seriously, I don't think they are doing too bad. Their map system/satellite view seems to be nicer than Googles - but slower. I doubt they will ever be the number one search engine, however it's nice to see someone else building a powerful system. Yahoo lost their touch years ago in my opinion.

I agree - however Bell did come back with 25Mbit pricing for the wholesalers recently (only 4 years later!!). Normally Bell sells wholesalers services at about 50% of what Bell retails a service for. The higher speed stuff has been priced at about 95% of what Bell's retail rate is. A wholesaler can't run a business with such limited margin. Pricing still hasn't been approved yet and I think the follow up meeting with the CRTC is scheduled for sometime this summer. Things move very slow with the CRTC. The only reason there are such long delays for this is (my opinion) is to get the Bell legal team time to come up with a plan to counter the wholesaler argument. I also agree that UBB is not such a bad thing generally speaking. The CAP has been set far too low and the cost going over the cap is set far to high per gigabyte. Something like $1-2 per gig :(

In Canada another issue at the moment affecting the 3rd party/wholesale ISP's (small guys & gals) is the speed (megabits per second). Bell sells speeds 6 meg and below to the wholesalers at roughly 50% of cost of Bells lowest retail rate (at least they are suppose to do that). For about 3-4 years now there has been a battle with the CRTC/Bell/Small ISP's regarding access to higher speeds (25Mbit/etc) - Bell recently came back and proposed a rate of about 95% of resale value for wholesalers. A wholesaler cannot run a business with such a thin margin - it's impossible. Sadly, I do not believe the small ISP is going to get as much public support as the bandwidth cap issue has affected EVERYONE including Bell/Rogers/Wholesale subscribers. The speed (not cap) issue is now only going to affect the Small ISP/Wholesale market - not enough people subscribe to wholesale/3rd party ISPs. Sad really.

I don't even have an account !

Refreshing to see when tech is being used for good. I'm not a big fan of Facebook, but this elevates my opinion of the legitimate use of the website.

Yes, I thought this as well. I still think the CPU's and power supplies fans would be noisy (ac or dc). Good call on RAM and SSD.