Thank you for the spiffy new toy.

"City Car" means good for driving in the city. Not sure where you live, but in Tampa you're lucky if you can get above 50 during the commute hours. More than likely you'll never reach 40MPH.

If you bought your home out in the burbs, this would be a bad pick for you too. Same with single-car households--unless you can rely on mass transit for long-distance trips or car rentals are worth it to you, avoid this beast.

Inner-city and near-city commuters should give this a look.

Did you notice the solar panels on the roof? I wonder if this will create demand for UN-covered parking?! The VP's get to park in the sun and the lowly clerks have to suffer in the garage. [grin]

Assuming it'll work on any heat source, that includes burning cow pies, wood, garbage, etc. Things that can be burned are far more common and easy to get than gasoline, which, btw, cannot last very long in a container. Ever try to use last-year's gas to start your mower in the Spring? Gasoline has a shelf life.

Since the point is to provide drinking water to a village, I'd rather not have them at the mercy of the gasoline merchants in their area. Better to keep their water source free from politics and piracy.

SE supported Apple users. You could easily pair an SE bluetooth phone to any Apple computer and get it it's own IP address on the local network. It was very simple and slick. Most cell phone companies avoided Apple for the larger Microsoft crowd.

I have an SE W810i.

This phone is tied to Cingular (AT&T) and crippled with all sorts of unwanted software designed to direct me to AT&T's wireless store to buy ring tones. The unlocked version of this phone (non-crippled) can use any song as a ring tone. It's a freakin' music phone so it should be able to do this. My Corporate Blackberry POS can do this.

I really like using the phone, though. The UI is simple and nice. The messaging system is easy to use even on a standard 10-key pad.

What I really want is a small-screen candybar SE phone with a 3G radio that I can tether my Nokia N810 to. :-D That way I get a small, convenient phone without the iPhone bulk and can carry the internet tablet whenever I don't care about the bulk.

BTW: the reason Apple people liked the SE phone was because it was easy to connect via bluetooth to the network. SE supported Apple users, which other companies, especially WM companies, did not.

My N810 was stolen (!!) a few weeks ago. I have an opportunity to purchase something else having direct experience with the N810 and an iPhone (other adult in the house is a Mac person.)

I will be buying a new N810.

The browser isn't much slower than my desktop. The 3rd party software is decent. I enjoyed using Canola and pretty much used it near-daily. I never got much use out of the GPS, but then never really encountered a situation where I needed it. It was accurate and responsive once it acquired the satellites (which took too long, imho). It connected to my cheap and small cell phone to provide Edge access when I wanted it. As a portable media player, it was decent. Yes, I had to transcode down the movies to make them play well, but then I also needed to transcode them down to fit more than two on the 6GB memory card I had in it. I found that the quality was decent at 500MB per movie.

As for WiMax -- uh... who cares? Where in the heck can you get WiMax in the US? Rates are around $55/mo for Sprint's upcoming version. I pay less than that for cable broadband and I'm not going to pay for both at the same time. Better to just buy a 3G phone (we have 3G in Tampa) with AT&T's $20/mo data plan and tether the Nokia to it. Which, btw, is a strength--being able to use any cell or wifi signal without regard to provider.

From experience, you do not need a backup power supply for your fridge or freezer for quite a few hours. The key is to leave the doors closed until power comes back on. If power is out for more than a day, you're hosed, though.

Before a tracked storm comes through, I pull a plastic bottle of ice from the freezer and stick it in the fridge. If the power goes out, the ice takes longer to thaw and the fridge stays colder for longer.

I live in Florida. We get blackouts during some tropical storms and most hurricanes. So this is of use to me.

However, these sorts of "always charging" appliances leach power 24/7. Uninterrupted light is nice, but it will cost you. If you don't care about the cost in energy or the effects that has on the environment, the pennies each of these adds to your monthly bill is probably worth it. If you do choose to pay attention to power consumption, you may want to keep these down to minimum, and in my case, only plug them in during hurricane season.

Note that if your power goes out at 3am on a work-night, you'll be greeted with a face-full of LED to let you know.

LEDs generally do all that. Yes. And they last longer than "long enough". In fact, as highly priced as the replacement bulbs (for standard fixtures) are right now, it is worth your while to place them in any fixtures that require a ladder to reach. You may only have to replace them once a decade. And, if that's not enough, many of them are capable of dimming, unlike CFLs. (and which will save even more power, assuming you have a newer dimmer.)

We do harness gravity: Hydro-power.