I'll give Verizon props for this whole gutsy play and for the Droid itself which is truly a nice smartphone. I'm a happy iPhone owner but as a gadget nerd I just had to drop by a Verizon booth at the mall yesterday and test out the Droid. I was impressed (even though I still like the iPhone better overall).

What I WASN'T impressed with is overhearing the sales rep talk down about the iPhone to a clearly Droid-enamored customer alongside of me. He was really going off. I even heard him say "the Droid has Wifi, the iPhone doesn't". EXCUSE ME? And the not-so-knowledgeable customer was eating it all up like candy to a 10 year old. I almost jumped in.

Okay, I know you're a salesman and you are paid to put a certain "gloss" on the facts to sell phones and keep subscribers. But don't speak complete bullshit.

While I'm at it, I'll say that the whole "open app environment" of Android is a little overplayed. Maybe one day this will translate into a huge advantage, but right now I'd rather be "trapped" in Apple's closed app environment with 10,000 apps to chose from, which includes many extremely polished, incredible apps. Android's app selection and level of polish is rather laughable. At the present time, "open" only makes a big difference to those who REALLY want the few important apps that Apple won't allow, like Google Voice and Latitude.

Hey, I'd go ahead and recommend the Droid to friends who really want to stick with Verizon, but I'd also make sure they know the TRUE pros and cons, not just the sales pitches thrown out by Verizon.

I might save my money for digital bionic eye implants first, so that I can actually see the benefits of 4k technology on a 50" or less screen at home.

I'm pretty sure this is not unique to Verizon. If I'm not mistaken, AT&T has the same policy for Exchange use, even on the iPhone. I have an iPhone with a standard $30 data plan, and Exchange works fine. I'd guess neither carrier intends to press this on individual users (unless you're dumb enough to bring it up to the agent), but it's there for large corporate customers whom they both know will have to be honest and pony up the extra cash from their deep pockets.

I'm impressed, and yet I'm not. It certainly is a leap forward for e-ink, but I guess I'm just not sold on e-ink in general. In the end, these demos remind me of passive-matrix laptop LCDs in the early 90's. At the time, we were amazed to have a thin display at all in a laptop that you could carry in your bag. But by today's measures, they were washed out and had strange glitches. Seems like e-ink is a step back to those days, all for the purpose of obtaining very high battery life. I'd rather have a nice, crisp LCD that looks great indoors and outdoors (like the one in my iPhone, but larger), and go for fuel cell technology to take us the next step forward on battery life.

This "using a laptop" story is a load of crap. These pilots figured they'd cook up a story that the FAA couldn't disprove that would result in a much lesser penalty than the truth, which is that they were both sleeping.

Go visit www.pprune.org. This is a forum where real commercial pilots chat. They all know the realities of being in a cockpit and are pretty certain the truth is far different than what is being reported.

A laptop might distract a pilot for 5 or 10 minutes, but not 75 minutes. You don't completely ignore the instruments and radio for that long, unless you are sleeping or dead.

What's particularly revealing is that people who DO vacuum as a business (maids, hotel staff, etc.) invariably use regular bag vacuums (very robust, higher end models), not Dysons. They know better. I think we've all been duped by the bagless craze. I'm reminded of this every time I go outside to the trash can to empty my bagless vacuum's trash bin, and find myself standing in the cloud of dust that rises up from the trash can. In the name of saving a few pennies on bags, I've got to deal with emptying these messy bagless bins.

These days, my solution is to use my Roomba 500 as much as possible. If I'm going to spend a lot of money on a vacuum, it's going to do the job FOR me. As long as I run it often and keep it clean, it does a great job. I don't mind cleaning it by hand since I didn't actually have to DO the vacuuming.

RIM, no one wants this. Trust me. Watches are so 1980's. Especially really thick, bulky ones.

No woman's hands are big enough to make MY junk look small, I can tell you that!

...as does pretty much 90% of people who would buy COD MW2. I don't get the whole custom Xbox thing. Just don't. Put something new UNDER the hood, then we'll talk.

I just visited San Francisco over the 3 day weekend. Looks like the 850 mHz overlay is now on almost everywhere, and the improvement is night and day. I posted more detail on Howardforums.com, but in a nutshell, I got full bars and at least 1000 kbps downloads in Inner Sunset, Marina, SOMA, and Union Square, even two stories underground in a parking garage and deep inside the Macy's building. I never dropped a call. I confirmed 850 mHz frequency in all these locations. Now I don't live there, but I visit periodically (I live 2 hrs away) and this is DEFINITELY a change from before. There could still be plenty of holes and fine-tuning issues, but it looks like AT&T is finally living up to their promises, and they are finally getting close to being ready for MMS on the iPhone.

See more at: http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=1565091