I've got a gmail account (thanks to Blogger), and also have a Google AdWords account.
I've been sending mail to my gmail account from another account, and including things that I thought *should* trigger a Google text ad - one of mine, no less and keywords that certainly do trigger a text ad from the main Google search page - dont. I haven't seen one yet.
How many internet cafes are running their own SMTP servers? Very, very few.
Most folks using such a cafe are there for web access - hotmail and such - and access email via a browser.
So browser based email couldn't be scanned since Internet cafe users might just be looking at ordinary web pages (albiet advertising spammy products)...
I just hope these folks think a lot about security; I had to configure my Apple Base Station to use MAC address for all my wireless devices (two iMacs, a G4 PowerBook and two 5450 iPaqs) since the little bastards across the hall took to fucking with it whenever they could see it.
For once I'm actually glad someone is just a PC user; if they were using Linux or OS X and knew about Kismet or KisMAC I'd have an ongoing problem.
Why can't kids just do graffitti throw rocks through windows like I used to?
The UK used to demand that you boot your incoming laptop from their magic floppy disk which was somehow supposed to detect pornography.
I'm 'Merican and I've been living in the UK full time since 1997. I've also traveled to the UK - frequently! - on biz since 1996.
I've always travelled with a PowerBook, sometimes leaving and re-entering the country as often as 30+ times a year, yet for some strange reason I've never seen the Magic Floppy Porno Disk of which you speak.
Are we talking about the same UK?
Or have HMS Customs Service always acknowledged the moral superiority of PowerBook users?
When you short a stock you are engaging in two steps : first, your broker will borrow shares and second, you sell shares you don't own ("selling short") in the open market.
Now since you have borrowed stock, someday you have to pay back the loan (borrowed stock). Since you have sold the borrowed stock, you have to acquire shares (at a later date) to repay your debt. There are two scenarios here:
1) Stock price appreciates markedly; since you have to pay back the debt by purchasing (more expensive) shares in the open market, your potential loss is unlimited.
2) Stock price tanks. Now you can acquire cheaper shares to repay your debt.
A simple example:
Say I decide the future prospects of some random company are not good at all. I determine that the shares are overvalued at $17.50, and instruct my broker to sell short.
My broker lends me the shares. Later, if the share price of this random company declines to, say, $10 / share I can acquire shares in the open market at $10, repay the loan of borrowed stock and pocket $7.50 / share profit.
Of course this simple example blissfully ignores real world issues like taxes, interest on the borrowed stock (after all, it is a loan) and brokers fees.
Also, since you have to borrow the share before you can sell them short, we're also ignoring the issue of where and how your broker acquires these shares.
For a company like SCO, there are probably no more shares left to be borrowed.
Finally, if you sell short at $17.50, and if the price drop to $Worthless - another way of saying zero - you don't have to repay your loan; you would pocket $17.50 / share profit.
I teach part time at a local University and I'm currently working with six Masters students on their dissertations.
They started in January and will hand in by August 15th. After I grade - and I know their work intimately since I approved topics and see drafts every six weeks or so - the Chairwoman of the department will grade them as well and then that's it. They're done.
So who the hell raises the bell when a dissertation crosses the line? I teach Econometrics so I know National Security implications aren't so readily possible, but this does make a reasonable query possible:
Do most US Universities have spooks - or "friends" - in the faculty? Folks that will send over an "interesting" dissertation for approval?
Hey what Uni did you study at? I'm currently one year into a Mphil / Phd programme at a bricks and mortar Uni in London, but my employer has offered me a position in another country.
I'm not sure my existing Uni will work with me - my advisor is against the idea - so I like the idea of on-line study.
I was at Bell Labs for almost three years in the early 1980's, moving over to AT&T Information Systems after the court ordered breakup of AT&T in 1984 or so.
They were pretty laid back then; I may have signed an NDA but I certainly don't recall it. I do recall the usual W4 and Insurance BS but an NDA doesn't stick out.
And yes, I had almost full access to the source tree. IIRC, only some arcane kernel stuff wasn't available, being crafted in assembly. But given the corporate culture I have no doubt it was somehow accessable, but because it was processor / architecture specific, I never bothered looking for it. Plenty of stuff to look at and learn from at higher levels.
Source code was available to any member of technical staff and since it was my second job out of Uni I had a ball. I even dl'ed some source to my Osborne I so I could read it at my lesiure.
In fact I didn't realise how special it was at the time to have access to Unix source code until maybe five years later when I'd moved over to Wall Street.
The Street was ramping up sharply on tech in those days, and Unix (think Sun, NeXt and SGI workstations) was the only game in town since PCs were still pretty underpowered.
I remember someone asking me a question, and I told him to "grep for it". He looked at me cryptically, and then it hit me.
No way to grep Dude - they's binary distributions.
I'm American, but teach Econometics ('Forecasting Financial Markets' this term) one night a week at a University here in London.
I haven't quit my day job, it pays the mortgage and I actually enjoy it!
But in terms of office hours, my employment contract calls for two hours a week, at a time and place of my choosing. That means saturdays 9AM to 11AM and yes, I'm posting this on/. while waiting for folks to drop by. Door closed but not locked, and I don't talk to my office mate and she doens't talk to me. Not sure what species I am.
I've got 23 students and these hours seem to work fine. Isn't ten hours a week a little much? Of course we don't know the class size or the topic, but let's face it - quality teaching means small class sizes.
This seems like too much hand holding to me. Deliver the material in a three hour, weekly lecture. Clear any preliminary issues then and there. I set aside fifteen minutes for this at the end of each lecture since if everyone has the same problem I screwed up in delivery. Assign the reading and make yourself available during office hours to resolve any one students intractable problems.
Remove the impediment, nudge the student in the right direction (additional reading, whatever is needed) and usher him or her out the door. No hand holding here.
My philosophy - and I state this clearly at the first lecture - is I will not pass or fail a student - they will pass or fail themselves.
My first job out of University was working as a computer operator at a wind tunnel.
We did lots of commerical and military stuff, and I'm really not surprised to find the F117 and a few other machines that I prolly shouldn't mention not on their list of aircraft we helped build.
For a young geek in Western New York, this was a radically cool job. When I started working there we used a bunch of IBM 1401's, at the time their largest single installation of these machines.
Later we became a DEC shop, and beta tested their PDP 11/70 series of machines.
Prolly the neatest thing - aside from the computers that is - were the models. There were a group of craftsman that would carefully, over a period of months and sometimes years, hand craft these incredibly accurate models of the various aircraft.
But they weren't just static models, being integrated with hundreds of air pressure sensors.
I worked on what was called the 'Data Reduction Team'; our machines captured, in real time, data from these sensors and later we could model the prototype aircrafts performance - should it be built that is!
Far cheaper to spend a few months in a wind tunnel testing various models then to build the real thing and have it crash.
When working we were a 24/7 shop, and although the money was good, that was the rub. The biz was largely defense driven, and after a few years I got tired of the binge and purge nature of working in defense.
But the story had a happy ending, as I landed a gig at Bell Labs and never looked at the defense industry again.
Speaking as someone who in the past has managed budgets of up to five million US dollars for a global investment bank (I was a line manager, and that was my project budget) Microsofts well documented Predatory Pricing just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Now I'm not an anti-Microsofter; I have a complex love / hate thing going for them.
I remember CPM / DOS quite well, and wondering why I couldn't use a GUI like I had at work (SparcStations) and the absolute joy when windows 3.0 then 3.1, etc came along.
And then there are their Office applications and generally well received development tools. I like lots of things about their products - accelerator keys rock, for example! So they've done some good.
But then they've got to go and destroy all the good will towards them by simply insisting that they will own all of it.
So if I have a choice between Microsoft and anyone else, I'll go with the latter. The industry as a whole has been damaged enough by Redmonds behaviour.
IMHO this misses the fundamental problem; tax codes in most countries are just too damn complex.
In the United States they've managed to create such a complicated system that with few exceptions, the services of a professional - or the use of sophistcated and costly software - are necessary. This is ridiculous!
My situation is a little bit more complicated than most since I'm American and live in London. Last year my US tax return alone was 88 pages! Unbelievable.
And yeah, I have to use an accounting firm to complete my return even though I've got a Masters in Finance. The cost of an honest mistake discovered years later would be far too high for me to risk it.
So I get to pay KMPG about two thousand Pounds to complete my US and UK tax returns. Great.
I'm inclined to say "Great Idea!" but before I do so I'd like to know how much of this $15 would end up in the artists pockets?
If it's anything like Courtney Love's RIAA / Recording Artist math, I think it will just put more cash in the wrong pockets.
Seems like the Artists should get a higher percentage than their standard recording contract might allow, since this would be a major impulse buy on the part of many concert goers - especially considering the effect of various substances and inhibitions.
but I do know that CD's and DVD's are both the same in that the are physically constructed of several layers.
Each layer consists of various polymers, and although sealed polymers are susceptible to degrading. Even though they are realtively robust compared to say, videotape, the weakest part of a CD or DVD is the side where information is made available to the reading device.
Polymers can react with moisture or UV light, and once that reaction starts (this is where a *real* chemist should start to add some meat to this discussion) it throws off by products that cause further degradation.
CDs and DVD's do ship with a protective layer that is intended to shield the delicate, information carrying sublayers but once damaged (i.e., scratched), the degradation process can begin.
Apparently if you store them properly - low humidty and at about 8 to 10 C, even damaged CD's and DVD' s will remain stable indefinitely.
I mean its a cool piece of work (I'm an AIBO owner and love stuff like this) but in the end Tattooing is more art than science, and I'm not sure the Robot can sub for the Artist, except in a purely mechanical way.
Where the Robot might be useful is covering in large areas of skin with single colours (back, stomach, etc), but I don't see much capability here for detail work. And its not clear to me how the Robot handles blood - a human artist will wipe it away, restablish boundaries (i.e., check progress against finished design) and continue tattooing. If the Robot doesn't do this you're gonna be one bloody camper - litterally dripping! - by the time its over.
Its not clear to me how the Robot determines depth. By this I mean how deep the needle is penetrating. If your Artist (human or Robot) doens't go deep enough, your growing skin will just push the design out as new cells form under the ink. Driving the needle too deep is another set of problems - potentially severe - as well.
How will the Robot handle different skin? Everyones skin is different and absorbs ink differently. This is really a judgement call on the artists part - different coloured ink looks different on different peoples skin. You just can't use a bottle of RED and assume it will look the same on any two people because it won't. A good artist will adapt to this problem, both in real time (i.e., while the work is being done) and before the work begins.
Also, don't forget that more complex 'Tats typically take multiple sessions, so you'll have a calibration problem next time you visit (i.e., aligning the machine and the existing 'Tat).
Its not uncommon for some back pieces to take months if not years, involving dozens of sessions so these registration problems are potentially major.
I started with a Newton 100, moved up to a Newton 130 (backlit screen, yow!), and later migrated to a Sony Magic Cap.
Howly cow! I still remember that interface, especially the abstraction of the local area net (i.e., you'd go outside and look down the street at all the buildings - other computers - you could enter).
Anyhow, this led to a flirtation with the Palm camp, and I used pretty much anything they sold including various Visors once the two co-founders had left the building.
AND THEN
I bought a Compaq iPaq.
I admit it; I was seduced by the colour screen, the generous amounts of RAM (64 MB), easy connectivity.
But something happened.
I had to reset the box a lot and resinstall sw. And the box lacks a built-in search function. Shees! To search my notes for a particular name I have to purchase a third party tool?
Ok. But then there was another problem? How the hell do I get my name and address data out of iPaq and Outlook? I've never found an easy way.
I like the iPaq for its form factor, the colour screen, and relatively fast processor.
What I don't like is its apparently the roach motel of PDAs; get your data in and it ain't coming out.
Slashdot Mirror
"...I would bet that 99% of us can't name one product from the HP lineup, but can name..."
Well I certainly can - HP sells iPods!
How to get them?
I've got a gmail account (thanks to Blogger), and also have a Google AdWords account.
I've been sending mail to my gmail account from another account, and including things that I thought *should* trigger a Google text ad - one of mine, no less and keywords that certainly do trigger a text ad from the main Google search page - dont. I haven't seen one yet.
During the Beta are they inhibiting the textads?
Anyone see an ad in the wild yet?
One Terrabyte actually, for about $1199.
Yes, I can imagine a Beowulf cluster of these...
And IANAL, but what will the grounds for your suits be? And how will you determine, apparently before the fact, if they have assets to go after?
As I said, I'm not a lawyer but I am a Banker; there are lots of ways to hide assets in the US and even more if you start to park stuff offshore.
Is there alimit to the funds you plan to devote to this activity? I'm assuming (perhaps erroroneously) that you have to pay to file a lawsuit.
Don't take this the wrong way - I'm supportive, just curious how you folks plan to go about this.
How many internet cafes are running their own SMTP servers? Very, very few.
Most folks using such a cafe are there for web access - hotmail and such - and access email via a browser.
So browser based email couldn't be scanned since Internet cafe users might just be looking at ordinary web pages (albiet advertising spammy products)...
on detail. Does anyone know how you program this thing?
Depending upon the sophistication of tools they might or might not have, it could be relatively easy or suck large.
And what about the cost? I couldn't really find anything, but several sites note that these things are indeed for sale.
Apparently they are selling two different robots, and also have one that is designed to be covered in material approximating human skin. That one can
Nifty stuff.
posting from work...links should be
www.apple.com/support/itunes/s_allowances.html
www.providian.com
is all you need. Read the iTunes disclaimer more carefully.
I live in London and have a credit card with a US address. I use a friends snail address for my initial application and statements.
This card is backed by a deposit ($500), and initially your credit limit is slightly less than the deposit. Over the limit is increased.
You also earn interest on your deposits.
So you can purchase music from the iTunes store; they don't check IP or anything like that.
Apple just wants you to have a credit card with a US billing address.
I just hope these folks think a lot about security; I had to configure my Apple Base Station to use MAC address for all my wireless devices (two iMacs, a G4 PowerBook and two 5450 iPaqs) since the little bastards across the hall took to fucking with it whenever they could see it.
For once I'm actually glad someone is just a PC user; if they were using Linux or OS X and knew about Kismet or KisMAC I'd have an ongoing problem.
Why can't kids just do graffitti throw rocks through windows like I used to?
The UK used to demand that you boot your incoming laptop from their magic floppy disk which was somehow supposed to detect pornography.
I'm 'Merican and I've been living in the UK full time since 1997. I've also traveled to the UK - frequently! - on biz since 1996.
I've always travelled with a PowerBook, sometimes leaving and re-entering the country as often as 30+ times a year, yet for some strange reason I've never seen the Magic Floppy Porno Disk of which you speak.
Are we talking about the same UK?
Or have HMS Customs Service always acknowledged the moral superiority of PowerBook users?
When you short a stock you are engaging in two steps : first, your broker will borrow shares and second, you sell shares you don't own ("selling short") in the open market.
:
:
Now since you have borrowed stock, someday you have to pay back the loan (borrowed stock). Since you have sold the borrowed stock, you have to acquire shares (at a later date) to repay your debt. There are two scenarios here
1) Stock price appreciates markedly; since you have to pay back the debt by purchasing (more expensive) shares in the open market, your potential loss is unlimited.
2) Stock price tanks. Now you can acquire cheaper shares to repay your debt.
A simple example
Say I decide the future prospects of some random company are not good at all. I determine that the shares are overvalued at $17.50, and instruct my broker to sell short.
My broker lends me the shares. Later, if the share price of this random company declines to, say, $10 / share I can acquire shares in the open market at $10, repay the loan of borrowed stock and pocket $7.50 / share profit.
Of course this simple example blissfully ignores real world issues like taxes, interest on the borrowed stock (after all, it is a loan) and brokers fees.
Also, since you have to borrow the share before you can sell them short, we're also ignoring the issue of where and how your broker acquires these shares.
For a company like SCO, there are probably no more shares left to be borrowed.
Finally, if you sell short at $17.50, and if the price drop to $Worthless - another way of saying zero - you don't have to repay your loan; you would pocket $17.50 / share profit.
And they ain't good..
Insiders are all selling. Keep in mind that they have complete and perfect information about their firm, and its future prospects.
Insider selling is usually a sign that management feels the shares they hold are over, not under, valued.
When I'm bored I'll change my iPaq 5450 BlueTooth device identification to ABigHairyDick and then look for phones.
Great fun when someone's phone beeps, and on the screen they see "Accept connection from ABigHairyDick?"
Puzzeled frowns usually result although after this article I'm sure to get my smirking ass beat good.
Given the response by telemarketers against the FTCs Do Not Call List, how long before the first lawsuits are filed against AT&T?
I teach part time at a local University and I'm currently working with six Masters students on their dissertations.
:
They started in January and will hand in by August 15th. After I grade - and I know their work intimately since I approved topics and see drafts every six weeks or so - the Chairwoman of the department will grade them as well and then that's it. They're done.
So who the hell raises the bell when a dissertation crosses the line? I teach Econometrics so I know National Security implications aren't so readily possible, but this does make a reasonable query possible
Do most US Universities have spooks - or "friends" - in the faculty? Folks that will send over an "interesting" dissertation for approval?
Hey what Uni did you study at? I'm currently one year into a Mphil / Phd programme at a bricks and mortar Uni in London, but my employer has offered me a position in another country.
I'm not sure my existing Uni will work with me - my advisor is against the idea - so I like the idea of on-line study.
I was at Bell Labs for almost three years in the early 1980's, moving over to AT&T Information Systems after the court ordered breakup of AT&T in 1984 or so.
They were pretty laid back then; I may have signed an NDA but I certainly don't recall it. I do recall the usual W4 and Insurance BS but an NDA doesn't stick out.
And yes, I had almost full access to the source tree. IIRC, only some arcane kernel stuff wasn't available, being crafted in assembly. But given the corporate culture I have no doubt it was somehow accessable, but because it was processor / architecture specific, I never bothered looking for it. Plenty of stuff to look at and learn from at higher levels.
Source code was available to any member of technical staff and since it was my second job out of Uni I had a ball. I even dl'ed some source to my Osborne I so I could read it at my lesiure.
In fact I didn't realise how special it was at the time to have access to Unix source code until maybe five years later when I'd moved over to Wall Street.
The Street was ramping up sharply on tech in those days, and Unix (think Sun, NeXt and SGI workstations) was the only game in town since PCs were still pretty underpowered.
I remember someone asking me a question, and I told him to "grep for it". He looked at me cryptically, and then it hit me.
No way to grep Dude - they's binary distributions.
I'm American, but teach Econometics ('Forecasting Financial Markets' this term) one night a week at a University here in London.
/. while waiting for folks to drop by. Door closed but not locked, and I don't talk to my office mate and she doens't talk to me. Not sure what species I am.
I haven't quit my day job, it pays the mortgage and I actually enjoy it!
But in terms of office hours, my employment contract calls for two hours a week, at a time and place of my choosing. That means saturdays 9AM to 11AM and yes, I'm posting this on
I've got 23 students and these hours seem to work fine. Isn't ten hours a week a little much? Of course we don't know the class size or the topic, but let's face it - quality teaching means small class sizes.
This seems like too much hand holding to me. Deliver the material in a three hour, weekly lecture. Clear any preliminary issues then and there. I set aside fifteen minutes for this at the end of each lecture since if everyone has the same problem I screwed up in delivery. Assign the reading and make yourself available during office hours to resolve any one students intractable problems.
Remove the impediment, nudge the student in the right direction (additional reading, whatever is needed) and usher him or her out the door. No hand holding here.
My philosophy - and I state this clearly at the first lecture - is I will not pass or fail a student - they will pass or fail themselves.
My first job out of University was working as a computer operator at a wind tunnel.
We did lots of commerical and military stuff, and I'm really not surprised to find the F117 and a few other machines that I prolly shouldn't mention not on their list of aircraft we helped build.
For a young geek in Western New York, this was a radically cool job. When I started working there we used a bunch of IBM 1401's, at the time their largest single installation of these machines.
Later we became a DEC shop, and beta tested their PDP 11/70 series of machines.
Prolly the neatest thing - aside from the computers that is - were the models. There were a group of craftsman that would carefully, over a period of months and sometimes years, hand craft these incredibly accurate models of the various aircraft.
But they weren't just static models, being integrated with hundreds of air pressure sensors.
I worked on what was called the 'Data Reduction Team'; our machines captured, in real time, data from these sensors and later we could model the prototype aircrafts performance - should it be built that is!
Far cheaper to spend a few months in a wind tunnel testing various models then to build the real thing and have it crash.
When working we were a 24/7 shop, and although the money was good, that was the rub. The biz was largely defense driven, and after a few years I got tired of the binge and purge nature of working in defense.
But the story had a happy ending, as I landed a gig at Bell Labs and never looked at the defense industry again.
Speaking as someone who in the past has managed budgets of up to five million US dollars for a global investment bank (I was a line manager, and that was my project budget) Microsofts well documented Predatory Pricing just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Now I'm not an anti-Microsofter; I have a complex love / hate thing going for them.
I remember CPM / DOS quite well, and wondering why I couldn't use a GUI like I had at work (SparcStations) and the absolute joy when windows 3.0 then 3.1, etc came along.
And then there are their Office applications and generally well received development tools. I like lots of things about their products - accelerator keys rock, for example! So they've done some good.
But then they've got to go and destroy all the good will towards them by simply insisting that they will own all of it.
So if I have a choice between Microsoft and anyone else, I'll go with the latter. The industry as a whole has been damaged enough by Redmonds behaviour.
IMHO this misses the fundamental problem; tax codes in most countries are just too damn complex.
In the United States they've managed to create such a complicated system that with few exceptions, the services of a professional - or the use of sophistcated and costly software - are necessary. This is ridiculous!
My situation is a little bit more complicated than most since I'm American and live in London. Last year my US tax return alone was 88 pages! Unbelievable.
And yeah, I have to use an accounting firm to complete my return even though I've got a Masters in Finance. The cost of an honest mistake discovered years later would be far too high for me to risk it.
So I get to pay KMPG about two thousand Pounds to complete my US and UK tax returns. Great.
I'm inclined to say "Great Idea!" but before I do so I'd like to know how much of this $15 would end up in the artists pockets?
If it's anything like Courtney Love's RIAA / Recording Artist math, I think it will just put more cash in the wrong pockets.
Seems like the Artists should get a higher percentage than their standard recording contract might allow, since this would be a major impulse buy on the part of many concert goers - especially considering the effect of various substances and inhibitions.
but I do know that CD's and DVD's are both the same in that the are physically constructed of several layers.
Each layer consists of various polymers, and although sealed polymers are susceptible to degrading. Even though they are realtively robust compared to say, videotape, the weakest part of a CD or DVD is the side where information is made available to the reading device.
Polymers can react with moisture or UV light, and once that reaction starts (this is where a *real* chemist should start to add some meat to this discussion) it throws off by products that cause further degradation.
CDs and DVD's do ship with a protective layer that is intended to shield the delicate, information carrying sublayers but once damaged (i.e., scratched), the degradation process can begin.
Apparently if you store them properly - low humidty and at about 8 to 10 C, even damaged CD's and DVD' s will remain stable indefinitely.
And I don't see much of a future for this.
I mean its a cool piece of work (I'm an AIBO owner and love stuff like this) but in the end Tattooing is more art than science, and I'm not sure the Robot can sub for the Artist, except in a purely mechanical way.
Where the Robot might be useful is covering in large areas of skin with single colours (back, stomach, etc), but I don't see much capability here for detail work. And its not clear to me how the Robot handles blood - a human artist will wipe it away, restablish boundaries (i.e., check progress against finished design) and continue tattooing. If the Robot doesn't do this you're gonna be one bloody camper - litterally dripping! - by the time its over.
Its not clear to me how the Robot determines depth. By this I mean how deep the needle is penetrating. If your Artist (human or Robot) doens't go deep enough, your growing skin will just push the design out as new cells form under the ink. Driving the needle too deep is another set of problems - potentially severe - as well.
How will the Robot handle different skin? Everyones skin is different and absorbs ink differently. This is really a judgement call on the artists part - different coloured ink looks different on different peoples skin. You just can't use a bottle of RED and assume it will look the same on any two people because it won't. A good artist will adapt to this problem, both in real time (i.e., while the work is being done) and before the work begins.
Also, don't forget that more complex 'Tats typically take multiple sessions, so you'll have a calibration problem next time you visit (i.e., aligning the machine and the existing 'Tat).
Its not uncommon for some back pieces to take months if not years, involving dozens of sessions so these registration problems are potentially major.
Here's my story :
I started with a Newton 100, moved up to a Newton 130 (backlit screen, yow!), and later migrated to a Sony Magic Cap.
Howly cow! I still remember that interface, especially the abstraction of the local area net (i.e., you'd go outside and look down the street at all the buildings - other computers - you could enter).
Anyhow, this led to a flirtation with the Palm camp, and I used pretty much anything they sold including various Visors once the two co-founders had left the building.
AND THEN
I bought a Compaq iPaq.
I admit it; I was seduced by the colour screen, the generous amounts of RAM (64 MB), easy connectivity.
But something happened.
I had to reset the box a lot and resinstall sw. And the box lacks a built-in search function. Shees! To search my notes for a particular name I have to purchase a third party tool?
Ok. But then there was another problem? How the hell do I get my name and address data out of iPaq and Outlook? I've never found an easy way.
I like the iPaq for its form factor, the colour screen, and relatively fast processor.
What I don't like is its apparently the roach motel of PDAs; get your data in and it ain't coming out.