As someone who doesn't live in the US or Canada, can someone please explain the following:

1. Why anyone cares about the upfront cost of a phone, why is it exciting that it's dropped from $199 to $99 when in reality to buy the phone you are also buying a contract for several years and the cost is usually thousands of dollars? Shouldnt the entire contract amount be the one people look at?

2. Who in their right mind would sign a 3 year phone contract? If you were to buy one at Christmas, you would be eligable for a new phone at the start of 2013.

Well there is a typo when using the name 'God'

Welcome to 2006

If you google the specs for the Sierra Wireless 885u modem (obviously a typo by Engadget there is no such thing as a 855u) you will find the full specifications in about 30 seconds.

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to this country I live in. It's not all about providing coverage for these lowlife farmer scum you speak of, its about having coverage no matter where I decide to go, and along the way. Fact is I can get coverage along almost every major highway in the country for the vast majority of my journey.

I manage hundreds Next G connections with Telstra, it is easy to blanket a tiny country only a few hundred km wide with base stations (even if they are more concentrated), than it is to deploy 3,500 base stations over a 2,000,000 sqkm area running high speed fibre or microwave links between them all, and maintaining it. It takes over a day some times to get to some of these base station sites should repairs need to be made.

Now try tell me the cost of building, running and maintaining a network covering such a large area comes cheaply. Of course you get what you pay for.

I use this network on a daily basis and my business would not be the same without it. I am just getting on with business whilst the kiddies that can't get their parents to pay for decent wireless broadband put up with 3, Optus, or Virgins pathetic excuse. You will find these are the most vocal.

I can't really see your connection between ecommerce sites and a national broadband network that is the most techincally superior in the world.

While everyone is bagging Telstra because of their cost, they are by far the most advanced wireless provider in Australia and amongst the top in the world.

They cover 2 million square kilometers (over 99% of the population) - hence the cost. People bragging about how their tiny EU country is getting

For AU $89 you get 5GB downloads (capped then slowed) in any tiny town or major highway in the country. I consistently get in excess of 6 Megabits per second using their 7.2 series hardware in cities, and around 3 Mbps in rural areas. They do not oversubscribe their network like their nearest competitor, Optus who cover less than half this area with download speed lucky to reach dialup speeds.

Yes I'm a Telstra fanboi, and I have been using this service since it was literally switched on for the entire country just over two years ago. No one comes close, you pay for a quality service.

So this is basically a 1000 remote in black. This is one of the worst remotes I have ever used. What the reviewer did not say is that if you are left handed, usnig this remote is excrutiating. Its difficult to hold one handed, and contrary to what he says, most commands are actually accessed on the right side. Volume, mute and channel change are by far used more often than the touch screen. I found myself holding it sideways.

I swapped mine for a Harmony One and havent looked back, this is a brilliant remote.

Dell are honouring failed nvidia graphics motherboards even out of warranty. I know, I just got one of mine fixed that was months out of date.

If it's anything like Podcaster it will crash, be buggy as hell, and be slow.

The built in podcasting downloads on the iPhone leaves a lot to be desired too. It's just not done right. Apple need to redesign the whole concept and have it work the same way as when you purchase music, syncing back to your PC , auto refresh new podcasts without having to check each one individually.

It also needs to play in the iPod app not as a Quicktime file, so you can do other things at the same time. And get rid of that god awful 10MB limit over 3G.... only a minority of iPhone plans are on AT&T worldwide, and the rest of us actually pay for our usage (no all you can eat plans here)

Please!

Not so "underwhelming" now is it?