Time to sell the car.... the house.... the child....
:)

First, I am a Sprint customer.

There are lots of reasons for the Sprint demise. For one thing, Sprint is NOT available everywhere. And even in their well covered areas (I'm in Dallas) there are some significant dead spots... and they've been there forever and Sprint isn't going to fix it. I used to dial the code for dropped call... which is painful, but a nice way to get a rebate every month on your bill.

IMHO, victory goes to the provider that makes DATA affordable with tethering....

My current Sprint phone can tether (non 3G+, old phone), and it goes under the radar mostly at Sprint... but carriers in the USA REALLY cannot take the loads of full Internet... but they like to make it sound like they are ready. The iPhone is a good case and point. Showed AT&T that they can't do it.... though arguably they have the money to make it happen. Frankly they'd rather see Sprint and Verizon go belly up... and they're prepared to wait for that day without doing ANYTHING.

Sprint is focused on survival. They're still paying big for their past BAD acquisitions. Lots of blood loss.... the wound might heal if they could just stop the bleeding.

In a somewhat related story, Sony is announcing its return to CRT tube television... just to make Toshiba mad!!

AMD maintains its firm lead against Via. Go AMD!!

I have a Sony DCR-SR300... it's standard def. But what I like is that it looks like a USB hard drive when you plug it into your computer and the file format is mpeg2. The picture quality is pretty good and fantastic outdoors. It's a good choice if your platform isn't Windows (i.e. Linux). There are cheaper versions of this model that might also be interesting. Depends on how much quality/disk space you want.

It is as bad as engadget says. I've had to have two laptops replaced. No... there won't be any warning sign... you'll just power up one day and see a bunch of artifacts all over the screen (yes.. during boot). Sometimes the screen will just go black after a few minutes.

One laptop had the 135M on board... so the whole mainboard had to be replaced.

Ran into Hector and Darl this afternoon. Appears that Darl is concerned that AMD might not go through with their wise acquisition of their company. Darl told Hector that with his insight into business, he'd always have a job at SCO. But later Darl noticed that it was 300K and 30K that Hector wanted, and tried to skirt the issue.

If you just want a music and video player... the Cowon A2. The A3 adds a higher resolution screen (but 4.3".. who cares?) and DECREASED battery life.... the A2 is a better player IMHO.

The A2 has tremendous runtime... can easily watch 2-3 movies on a single charge and play music literally all day long (most won't need 20+ hours of continuous play).

Sound quality is great AND unlike the Archos, it records without having to drag around a dock. It's also a lot more stable than the Archos line... a Cowon A2 almost never crashes.

I own a Creative Zen, Creative Vision, Archos 504 and SEVERAL Cowon A2's (why several? One for each member of the family). The Cowon A2 is a steal if you can get it for $100 used.

The Cowon A2 is NOT a browser... does not have WiFi. If that's important, look at the Q5 or go with an Archos unit. But none of those players will be problem free... I guarantee it.

Archos units have volume problems (to protect your ear drums)... it's a common complaint, that and the fact that they break down quite easily. None of the Cowon A2's I have have ever had a problem. They were a good deal at $350, a better deal at $200 and nowadays a real steal at $100-150.

You can see my Archos/Cowon comparison reviews on youtube.

I've had an NVS 135m die... a 2500m just went.... both started displaying graphical artifacts. When the 2500 went, Dell said they are going to replace the WHOLE laptop. I think Nvidia has a pretty serious problem on their hands. One laptop is a D630, the other a Precision M90.

It's the Ultimate! Must be good...