... I know hearing aids aren't as covered as other medical devices, treatments, and prescriptions but they're not 100% out of pocket very often either.
They are in fact 100% out of pocket most of the time, in my personal experience, even if you have congenital hearing loss (not the age-related kind). About 25 years ago, the insurance companies would sometimes pay some part of the expense, but not much since then.
While the manufacture of custom ITC/CIC hearing aids seems to justify the prices, once they became the norm, the price for behind-the-ear aids jumped from $600 to $2K. I had profound hearing loss and could only use the non-custom behind-the-ear aids. I paid extra for ear molds to attach them to my ears. There is no justification for the price for these kinds of aids.
I have since lost all of my hearing and graduated to cochlear implants. I pay $2K per year just for repair insurance now that the initial warranty period is up. Then I pay another $1K for rechargeable and disposable batteries every 1-2 years. None of these expenses is covered by any insurance. How can people with tight budgets afford this? If I get laid off [again] in a tight economy, is it reasonable that my only choice is to be deaf when I run out of batteries or a part breaks?
I also had a marked decrease in unsolicited calls when I got on the DNC list. For the charities and political groups, I politely ask them to take me off their call lists and they never call again.
The only one that really bothered me was the hard drive/memory mix-up, or lack of differentiation, my father used whenever talking about his computer. Even worse, he always took my brother's word as The last word in computer technology, even though he's a dentist and I was building computers for a living. He must have thought technology was not for "girls".
You can't really be so sure about the impending death of desk/laptops.
I believe you may have missed the Google outage that had cloud users in an uproar last week: http://www.macworld.com/article/140641/2009/05/googleoutage.html . I think the general web-using public finally learned you can get burned by not running apps on your own desktop/laptop, or by not storing your own data.
Don't forget about the cable tv boxes you rent tracking your viewing habits. This was the primary reason I only used "Basic Cable" until I was basically bullied into getting a box to get *any* cable service.
I had nothing but heartache with a Toshiba laptop - battery life: 45 minutes tops; Sound only worked sometimes and required a reboot to turn it back on. The wireless card worked sporadically - I was disconnected about every 10 minutes.
I replaced it with a bargain Lenovo from woot.com and have no complaints about the hardware. The battery life is more than 2 hours, the sound is excellent, it has a built-in video and microphone for Skyping, DVD burner, well-placed ports and vents (it never gets too hot), excellent wireless and bluetooth, fingerprint reader and a card-reader slots for 5 types of media. I wouldn't take a free Toshiba laptop.
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... I know hearing aids aren't as covered as other medical devices, treatments, and prescriptions but they're not 100% out of pocket very often either.
They are in fact 100% out of pocket most of the time, in my personal experience, even if you have congenital hearing loss (not the age-related kind). About 25 years ago, the insurance companies would sometimes pay some part of the expense, but not much since then.
While the manufacture of custom ITC/CIC hearing aids seems to justify the prices, once they became the norm, the price for behind-the-ear aids jumped from $600 to $2K. I had profound hearing loss and could only use the non-custom behind-the-ear aids. I paid extra for ear molds to attach them to my ears. There is no justification for the price for these kinds of aids.
I have since lost all of my hearing and graduated to cochlear implants. I pay $2K per year just for repair insurance now that the initial warranty period is up. Then I pay another $1K for rechargeable and disposable batteries every 1-2 years. None of these expenses is covered by any insurance. How can people with tight budgets afford this? If I get laid off [again] in a tight economy, is it reasonable that my only choice is to be deaf when I run out of batteries or a part breaks?
I also had a marked decrease in unsolicited calls when I got on the DNC list. For the charities and political groups, I politely ask them to take me off their call lists and they never call again.
The only one that really bothered me was the hard drive/memory mix-up, or lack of differentiation, my father used whenever talking about his computer. Even worse, he always took my brother's word as The last word in computer technology, even though he's a dentist and I was building computers for a living. He must have thought technology was not for "girls".
You can't really be so sure about the impending death of desk/laptops. I believe you may have missed the Google outage that had cloud users in an uproar last week: http://www.macworld.com/article/140641/2009/05/googleoutage.html . I think the general web-using public finally learned you can get burned by not running apps on your own desktop/laptop, or by not storing your own data.
This information is on the NASA home page, right at the top.
The phenomenon from the last paragraph is perfectly illustrated here: http://www.xkcd.com/242/
Don't forget about the cable tv boxes you rent tracking your viewing habits. This was the primary reason I only used "Basic Cable" until I was basically bullied into getting a box to get *any* cable service.
I had nothing but heartache with a Toshiba laptop - battery life: 45 minutes tops; Sound only worked sometimes and required a reboot to turn it back on. The wireless card worked sporadically - I was disconnected about every 10 minutes. I replaced it with a bargain Lenovo from woot.com and have no complaints about the hardware. The battery life is more than 2 hours, the sound is excellent, it has a built-in video and microphone for Skyping, DVD burner, well-placed ports and vents (it never gets too hot), excellent wireless and bluetooth, fingerprint reader and a card-reader slots for 5 types of media. I wouldn't take a free Toshiba laptop.