Perhaps the US could use all the money it saves by dropping the penny from circulation to help fund education in math and sciences (and by that I mean actual math and science, not stuff like creationism).

It's more like you Americans and your crazy dropping of the 'u' - Any number of the commonwealth countries follow the proper English spelling. Most countries have changed over to metric as well...

I would be ok with that, but you can bet all those kids with expensive smartphones wouldn't. How do you think they could pay for those phones if they weren't subsidized? And you can bet they'd rather have the subsidy up front - damn the consequences - so they can go on Facebook and Twitter without having to fork out $400-700.

This side conversation (starting with telso) is an excellent description with a mostly-neutral yet extremely informative and correct description of the issue. Often enough people just spout knee-jerk reactions without looking at the reasons, and that doesn't make for a very good discussion. Thanks to both telso and green1 for providing a reasonable amount of sanity while actually discussing the issues.

To continue with that, I don't mind expanding foreign investments in Canada, and with Canadian companies, but it does have to be fair to all. That means giving startup companies the same chances as the big ones, and vice versa. It doesn't directly imply that all companies will then increase their foreign ownership, although most will likely increase it some. It does mean more room for competition and that's been part of the problem for all these years.

With the big three, they are essentially all very similar in coverage and plans and phones. This is a direct result of the competition between them, which not only causes the perception that their all in cahoots (whether real or perceived) to drive up prices, but also that if one of them offers something, the other two pretty much have to match it. It's created an expectation among the consumers, like with hardware subsidies, that cause the companies to earn their money in different ways.

People have mentioned (and will continue to mention) prices in the rest of the world as being much more affordable for service but it's important to note North America is a unique subset of the cellular world. I mentioned hardware subsidies, most other cellular companies don't offer them and consumers have to buy their phones at without discounts. That means all 17 year olds can't afford to get an iPhone/Blackberry/Android device but instead buy an affordable phone that allows them to text and call. Then they buy an iPod or MP3 player for extra media and use that separately. Only people who have a genuine need and ability to use/buy more expensive phones, like smartphones, do so. Those differences in cost structure certainly do affect the way the rest of your service is priced so the carriers can recoup those costs.

Also consider the size of our country. Somewhere like England or Japan would have much lower costs (with a much higher consumer base, using England as an example has $15M more people than Canada but would easily fit in one of our provinces by actual landmass, never mind Japan) to provide infrastructure. European countries like England also have their infrastructure spread across other countries which share the costs for roaming from, say, England to France between other companies, or divisions of the same carrier. For Canada, it costs money to build towers that reach all the way out to the corner or RR2 and Township Rd 4 and yet carriers still expected to have amazing speeds and clear quality for calls.

Now obviously there are still concerns over cost of services and quality, and all my rambling has gotten way off topic, so I'll end with this: for a startup to be competitive, they are limited provide coverage only to several major cities (as the cost to start a whole new network - even if it was shared across several companies - would be considerable) and keep rate plans low to attract consumers despite their other limitations, but it's important for that to still be done within the confines of the current laws to make it fair for everyone. For the major carriers to lend a considerably large hand to supporting someone like Public Mobile is actually a refreshing sign and this decision overall is a positive so that no one, including the government, plays too large a hand themselves in controlling businesses.

Oh, I'm not assuming someone is correct or not, I'm talking about market share. They are quickly growing in the computer market and we all know how popular their iPod and iPhones are. Apple strictly designs their devices to be their way, if developers don't like it then tough luck. Granted, many of the people who buy their products don't think they care about stability as much as popularity, but they wouldn't even know it existed if it didn't work well enough to be popular in the first place.

In Europe, not everyone buys the most expensive phones with the greatest chances of causing problems since they don't get subsidized on the price of the hardware. More people use regular phones as a result and not all the 80 year old grandmothers and 15 year old teenagers have iPhones.

Tell that to Apple, who won't allow anything not approved by them for their phones and the like. It improves stability and makes things easier to control, until someone does something to break it like unlocking or loading a poorly designed app.

Similar experience for me where I used to have very deep sleeps and despite setting alarms I wouldn't wake up. I would gradually get used to the alarm sounds and occasionally have to change to a new one. Once I got away from the deep sleeps, waking up wasn't a problem, but staying asleep sometimes is.

HAHAHAHA! That sounds exactly like the problem!

Obviously Microsoft doesn't want to acknowledge the large portion of their licensed users who set Windows to do their updates automatically but have never touched an antivirus or security software. I've worked in IT and with the Joe Public users and that was by far the biggest problem out there.

People would often call in with viruses/malware they've just been living with on a 2 year old computer, and when you asked them about what they use for antivirus, they wouldn't have a clue. "I used that link that was on my desktop when I bought it," they would say. Well, that 30 day trial will get you into more trouble than not applying your windows updates, especially when they're opening up all those emails from disposed Nigerian dictators.

As one of the comments in the article said, nothing is as much fun as a big hole punch and a mallet. That's what I use after we got tired of burning out drill bits, and all for under $20.

Competition has driven the providers to discount hardware in an effort to attract customers. That discount on hardware now is reflected in the price of rate plans and features since they aren't about to give you a $500 (or more) phone for $99. It has nothing to do with anything other than that. In my pricing example above, you'd pay $99 dollars for a new phone and then pay the rest ($401) over the life of your contract through added cost to your rate plan.

Hardware subsidies.

The US (Canada too) is one of the largest markets for hardware subsidies (anyone ever gotten a phone for free on an activation?) in the world and some countries/providers do not subsidize the hardware for their client's at all. That means the provider pays for the rest of your phone until profit from your features and plan cover the cost. The discounts enforced on your iPhone by Apple (as well as all the other discounts on hardware common today) have forced the prices of rate plans and features up so carriers can recoup the cost of that hardware they provide for so cheap.

So, you can either buy a new phone at full price and have great rate plans and cheap features or get a free (or nearly free) phone and pay more for the rest.

The PEBKAC issue is very real. I know many users who actually write down the route they took to do a simple task so they can repeat it each time. When anything in that route changes, even naming, all hell breaks loose.

I was surprised to hear 4 of the 10 surveyed would be upgrading to Windows 7. I could see that being higher than I expected if those companies had switched to Vista but were having issues. The RC for Windows 7 is much better than the RC for Vista so I'd expect a much better product for early adopters. Corporations are not usually among that group, however, due to costs in the software and IT support after the fact.

The trick here is how to send in a resume with nothing on it. He hasn't worked in developing anything to build a technical resume and companies won't hire a 16 year old kid with no work experience. Lots of jobs are geared towards recent graduates and they still expect some kind of work experience to prove at least you're capable of coming in on time to support your schooling. So, if he takes anything off his resume that isn't relevant to what he's applying for, it won't take a minute to read.

The other side is why isn't tech support experience valuable to an employer looking for something in the computer field? You might be working with scripts and batch files as well as honing your troubleshooting skills, an absolute must for any programmer who's ever had a program not compile. I can understand how it may suggest you aren't as capable since you only did that but he's just looking to have it taken on merit along with his schooling and examples of work.