Well, I guess the key starting point is what operating system are you running on? But for my rather extensive movie and tv collection, on windows I've found Mediaportal: http://www.team-mediaportal.com to be fantastic with its range of plugins to cope very well with TV and movies. Specifically the MP-TVSeries plugin for TV, which interfaces with the TVDB and gets all the information you suggest you want about your shows, including actor information, fanart, banners, posters, thumbnails, and the list continues. You can also sync all these details with an online tracking website such as the relatively new trakt.tv so you and your buddies can see what you recently watched (all done automatically once you have an account at the website and configure the plugin). There is an equivalent for movies called movingpictures which does pretty much the same thing, and you can set up your own categories for sorting too. Mediaportal is a spin-off from XBMC, but is also opensource, and free, but only runs on windows (and makes a very good HTPC software on the whole). So if you're not running windows, maybe try XBMC instead. That is just my personal experience, your mileage may vary.

Slightly off topic I know but.... I have a HTC desire, and I experienced a very similar problem as you. Although I think I tracked down which app it was and got rid of it, wasn't fun having my gmail account spam all the mailing lists I'm a part of, but thankfully google blocked that quickly (and the two times it happened - the first app that I got rid of wasn't the culprit). Anyway, to my point. If you've bought an app in the market place, then wiping your phone doesn't mean you can't have that app anymore. It is tied to your google account that you bought the app with. I have on multiple occassions, for multiple reasons (mostly forgetting to have a gold card in while performing an OTA update, whoops), had to reflash my phone to earlier version and reupdate. On each occassion I have then been able to go back into the market, and redownload the apps I had bought previously, for no extra charge. Also, as a handy bonus, they seem to show up in your download section so you don't need to go searching for them all again. Hope that helps you out.

I may not have mentioned it in my initial comment, but legibility was not the only reason to type notes. It meant I had a lot less to physically carry around, and I didn't have to worry about space for storage of notes (UK university halls leave a lot to be desired when it comes to space). Reading the material ahead of time doesn't tend to work with UK courses, they don't tend to follow a text book chapter by chapter as is the usual script in the US, and infact some of the courses don't even have textbooks that follow remotely closesly. I actually teach examples classes now as a part of my PhD, and my writing on the board is fine, as I don't have to write at maximum speed, I can write legibly.

During my undergraduate physics degree I started by taking notes on paper, however I started to notice I was struggling to read my handwriting. I soon moved onto typing notes, in openoffice, using its built in equation editor, and attempting to draw diagrams with a stylus on a graphics tablet. After a year of doing this I realised it was a bit of a struggle to keep up, but in the mean time had learnt LaTeX. Then I stumbled upon an even better solution, type the notes (and equations - managing to keep up with the lecturer), and leave a space in the notes for the diagrams (i.e. setup the environment and name them in ascending order fig1, fig2 etc), but draw the diagrams manually on paper. Then I could copy the diagram at a later point into the LaTeX document using the graphics package of my choice (and for the particle physics module, feynmf for LaTeX proved particularly helpful). It is actually possible to keep up with the lecturer, so long as you reach the point that when typing you don't have to think about what your typing for things such as \alpha and so on. You also have to be fairly accurate with your typing, and be able to visualise how the notes are going to look without compiling them. Overall, if you don't think yourself capable of that, stick to pen and paper, if you do and you have troubles reading your own handwriting when trying to scribble quickly (I can type much faster than I can write legibly), then it is worth looking into.

Which I think shows the point of the OP quite well. That considered is quite a lack of death really given what they were doing.

Well, I have to say thats not been my experience as well. I have an inspiron 630m, which even after the warranty had run out (by about 5months at the time) I emailed their tech support when the LCD screen developed a problem. Something inside had fried, and initially they were wanting to charge me roughly £150 to get a new panel for it, but after one more reply from their they replaced it for free, even sent out a tech to do it, and as a bonus it was actually an uprated "glossy" screen that they charge more for.