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  • Rai
  • Member Since Sep 26th, 2006
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Engadget25 Comments
Engadget Mobile6 Comments

Recent Comments:

Please someone make one of these MID things with a pressure sensitive touchscreen, preferrably a Wacom digitizer. That's all I want.
@Common Sense: I really think the tobacco companies see e-cigarettes as a fast growing trend that they want to get on board with. I'm sure they also have R&D departments working on their own versions--who really knows all the details of regulation and politics that big tobacco entails. I just think it odd that 5-6 cigar shops in New York City were selling them up until only a few weeks ago, and then stopped. And in two cases I was told that they couldn't keep them on their shelves. Unless there was an FDA ban on e-cigs, which there is not, why would they stop selling them? Because they might be poisonous? Everything in those shops are poisonous. Maybe I am a conspiracy theorist after all, but it certainly smells funny.
I thought your comment was right on the money
I think you are right on with your comments.
@broli: well said.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that the FDA has nothing to lose and everything to gain by issuing a statement that e-cigarettes may not be completely, entirely harmless to the body over time with prolonged use (as is most industrial products we consume and inhale). The tobacco companies have obviously lobbied to get strict restrictions on these ASAP so that they can get into the game, and while they are about to be subjected to huge profit losses because of the other new laws governing tobacco products coming in.

In Manhattan, I was recently calling tobacco shops looking to purchase an e-cigarette (I'm a moderate smoker). None of them carried them, which seemed strange because there is a thriving online market. Then I started getting answers... many did carry them up until recently but pulled them until the safety was checked out. Ok, fair enough. Until you realize that these cigar/cigarette shops rely strictly on the tobacco companies for their very business existence. They have obviously been encouraged NOT to sell them, likely by threat of penalties in costs for their inventory, etc. One vendor on Lexington Ave and 51st pretty much admitted as much, though indirectly.

The articles by Engadget and Gizmodo go overboard in exaggerating the recent FDA findings. If you read the FDA report, there is absolutely nothing that suggests these devices and solutions get anywhere NEAR the utter deadliness of regular cigarettes and tobacco products. It's a like a preliminary peer into a tiny sample, with highly political intent. Essentially, it proves that others' previous (unreasonable) claims that e-cigarettes are "harmless", is a false statement.

Well Obviously. These are drug delivery (nicotine) systems, and nicotine is a highly addictive substance. But compared to tobacco, especially the chemical witches brews from the major cigarette manufacturers? Come on, it's not even close.

Watch, over the next few years, we will see FDA purview come over e-cig nicotine solutions (sensibly, I think), and soon after newer "safer" e-cigs will be introduced to market by Big Tobacco. It needs to keep it's profit levels skyrocketing somehow–it's an insatiable monster. Most companies and manufacturers selling this stuff now will be run out of business. It's about to become a big boy's game.

In the left photo, if the shadow being cast on the right side of the iPhone was real, there would be a different highlight on the left side of the bezel. That shadow is much too extreme.
I want to go to one of those earphones
The 1.1.3 to 1.1.1 downgrade makes an iPhone's phone functions UNUSABLE at this time. This is more than a little caveat guys...
I've tried many devices on AT&T/Cingular over the past year (30-day return policy at BestBuy Mobile is a great thing). 8525, Blackjack, Blackberry 8800, Tilt, 8820, and recently the Moto Q9 Global. I also have an iPhone which I never have returned. Without going into comparing the iPhone's strengths and weaknesses with the others, I want to look at EDGE vs UMTS and HSDPA. I would take web surfing on EDGE on iPhone vs. HSDPA on the Tilt or Q9 with IE/Opera ANY TIME. Maybe once there is a solid Webkit browser on WinMob there will bea difference. But it's the latency that really determines how fast you load pages. I'm not talkign about over the air downloads or SLingbox...those suck over EDGE. But the browsers suck so bad on Win Mob, and the latency (connect and query time) just doesn't make it that much better. The quickest to laod web page data is the blackberry anyway, since they process internet data through their own servers. My friend's 8700 on T-Mobile loaded the same page MUCH faster than my Tilt in IE (with HSDPA). The point is, this argument about the EDGE iPhone vs. current 3G phones is really a negligible one for web surfing.
The ATT version MAY look like this, but that picture is a photoshop job. The upper left has been clone tooled to remove the camera. The brushed metal grain is altered up there. Also, the "8925" silkscreen has a distinct rectangle of pixel noise around it.

I plan on getting the unlocked version anyway. Unadulterated HTC action!
Let the hive mind of Engadget get that for you.
"I own an iPhone 3G and I'm looking for a decent speaker / alarm clock for it. I am going to listen music in a mid-sized room, so I want nice quality speakers with solid bass. I also want to use it as an alarm clock, so it would be great if there is such a feature. The price can be low-mid to mid-high range. I was looking at the Klipsch iGroove SXT; it's powerful, slick and the reviews are good, but it doesn't have an alarm clock feature. It's no deal breaker if I can set it up from the iPhone, but I'm not sure. Thanks!"

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