Really?!?! Why would I buy a car that would ONLY drive to Walmart. I would prefer a tool that I own to be used as I choose, and not give the choice to somebody else. I personally have looked at many, and have fallen in love with the idea of the Archos G9 101 250gb. It is a 10 inch tablet with hdmi output, has an app you can install on your android phone and use as a remote control when it is being used with hdmi on your big screen. It also has a full size USB host on the back that in Europe currently can hold an optional $49 3G dongle that is unlocked. Also their media player will handle damn near anything you throw at it. Plus it has a 250 gig spinning hard drive. I don't think the 250 gig has been released yet, but other size ones are out there, I have an iPad currently, and it feels like I am slamming my head into a wall at times. I am going to get the g9 and either sell or give away this thing. Good luck, and that is my .02

You can't go wrong with the Canon Rebel, as a matter of fact the newer ones also shoot he video that is good enough to shoot a hd tv show (one entire season of House was shot on one, and I just worked a movie that quit shooting last week "Arthur Newman Golf Pro" and they were using one in addition to some VERY expensive cameras. But the downside to these cameras is the cost of the lenses. You can easily tie up thousands in lenses for a three hundred dollar camera. I bought my wife one, and have personally hit that wall hard. I however use a Panasonic Lumix and have gotten some AMAZING shots with it. Plus it truly is designed as a point and shoot, as opposed to the Cannon which takes ALOT of skill, experience, and just dumb luck for me to get the same outcome. The point and shoot quality out of a true dslr camera isn't where it's at, they are designed for you to adjust everything for every shot, while the Panasonic I use will allow me to do either and has ALOT of settings in between as well. Good luck! And don't forget a tri pod. It makes those night shots turn out sooo much better. I love going to the beach at night with the Panasonic on a tripod and choosing the star setting and leaving the aperture set for 30 seconds to get great star shots!

It's called Archos. They've been doing it longer then Apple. Check out the Archos 80G9. Wifi only (there is a dongle you can buy for $49, and put ANY dim card in, or use the dongle port as a fully functioning USB port) it has hdmi out, plays FLAC files out of the box, and cah be had with up to a 250gb hard drive. Also has an app for your android cell phone to use as a remote control when it is plugged into the tv via hdmi. Runs stock android, with Archos's media player (that is a plus). It starts at $269 on Amazon.

I want to say thank you. Personally I have a very hard time communicating my thoughts through my hands, as such I have lurked /. Since 99 or so. What you have done here has changed my life. Words are more powerful then most realize, and you have brought many ideas out of the corners and into the light for the world to see, it had been a LONG time since a /. Article brought down a major site from just linking to it, but I do remember it happening quite frequently in those early days. You (or I should really say all y'all from the beginning) helped give a voice to us nerds that the world noticed. What you helped create truly did change the world. This is a place where people who normally would not mix, do mix. We are all equals here. In those early days I would return from work at one in the afternoon, and this was the frost site I would hit, to get cought up on my daily tech. I drove a trash truck. I would always wonder how many more people here were like me, or was everybody a sysmin somewhere. As I said before I don't communicate well through written words, I'm ALOT better at getting out what I truly feel/meen by speaking nmad dyslexia! But I hope I got my point across. I totally agree with your statement that we are all alike here, if you had met me then it might have felt weird in my "cube" but underneath I'm sitting there wondering where I can get away setting up that new mandrake box that I started building the night before, somewhere that the wife wont mind in our tiny little house. That was then, this is now, I am now less then a mile from the beach in SC, lots better then Atlanta, and life is good, and you will be missed, your touch on the site will be missed, but I think what I truly will miss most of all is you speaking for all of us when those overlords say that /. NEEDS to look more like CNN, or MSN, that we need to bring this site up to date! They are the fools, thank you for speaking our thoughts to those guys/gals, and giving us a little corner of the Net all our own for the last 14 years. But you deserve a rest, you deserve some peace in your life. A little advice, you are free now, take advantage of it. Live where you dream of retiring some day, you have a wonderful opportunity at this moment. Follow your heart and the most satisfactory years of your existence will lie ahead of you. Bon voyage my friend. Thx for the memories. Preston. Professional Beach Bum.

I mean here the car is, a brain the size of a planet, and all we are asking it to do is to drive us around. I think it was attempted suicide.

My Uncle, and his family own a dry cleaning business in north Carolina and they have been doing this for years. It has caused the dry cleaners to make more money, as well as their clients. Plus as everything comes into the plant, it gets sorted so easily. You can run a cart through a scanner, and the computer reads everything in the cart, telling it where to go, and it is tracked from start to finish. The best part is, the cleaners and their customers make the agreements on the items that are supposed to be cleaned, not the actual pieces being cleaned, so they can tell the hospital who didn't turn in their shirts that week, yet collect for cleaning them. It is the future of dry cleaners.