Oh, c'mon...

Devices like this are *critical* for... sending the entire database of secrets of the American intelligence apparatus to your ex-bestfriend from college, so he can be babysat by a hot blond and an NSA assassin.

Thank you, I'll be here all week.

I would love to buy one of the HPs.

Any one of them.

But until they get over this compulsion to put glossy screens on them (as if anyone's going to use it to watch movies...), I won't touch one.

Matte screen is an absolute requirement for me.

Well, that would be interesting, since Sprint's job board had "Senior Architecture Design Engineer" or some such posted for the Qchat project with a Fall 07 posting date, the last time I look.

I have no doubt they can screw up the architecture of Qchat as badly as they did with DirectConnect, er, PTT, um, WalkieTalkie. (And I say this as someone who sat in a conference room in Tampa in 1996 with a district and regional manager from Nextel, told them they needed to implement what they would later call Cross-fleet and Nationwide, and was told "nah; they'll never do that. Our customers aren't telling us they need that.".

I did; my client did. Look; there it was.

For Qchat, they need easy iDen interop, a PC/Internet desktop client -- even if they bill it as a separate line of service -- and the ability to cluster said desktops into a dispatch group, with manual release of the operator-radio association from the operator side.

Extra bonus points for using open protocols on the Internet interface.

That won't be what we get, though.

Of *course* teachers are Luddites.

If they try to use computers in their classrooms, they'll run the risk of being senteced to 40 years of felony charges if a pop-up trojan pulls up a porn site during class.

*I* wouldn't ever let a computer be turned on in my classroom. And I'd tell everyone who'd listen why...

[ drive by comment ]

Frank: you're mistaken on two pretty important points.

Copyright inheres in an image from the moment you click the shutter; be prepared to provide case law citations if you wish to be believeable claiming otherwise.

And *I*, at least, don't feel like plugging my expensive camera directly into my (consumer-grade) computer...

Plus, pros should always be splitting shoots up among several cards; cards do fail and get stolen...