But that $300 base includes a keyboard, mouse, and speakers, and usually a free monitor (15" LCD or 17" CRT) and sometimes a printer or printer/scanner...
For a home user where all they want is the cheapest computer possible, the Mac Mini will never win. For a home user that wants something cheap with a few extras, the Mac Mini probably still won't be cheaper. Even after the XP Pro addition, the Dell still ends up being cheaper most of the time, considering the extras you often can get.
At the Mac Mini's $500, you need a keyboard, mouse, and monitor. A Dell laptop (which obviously has all three built in) is $50-100 more. You can get a low-end Mac for $500 and need to buy a keyboard/mouse, or a low-end Dell laptop for $550...
Performance-wise... I personally wouldn't expect too much from the Mini... but then again, I wouldn't expect that much more from the Dells.
That's the way that DVDs work; the protected files aren't readable until CSS authentication takes place. Similar things will happen in Linux or Windows.
Of course, the app has to be copied to RAM before executing, and this takes time, but the same is true on the PPC, too, no?
It's not any different than running a program in another OS. There's no noticable difference in loading programs from the SD card. They can be launched from anywhere on the SD card. I remember seeing a progress bar on my Palm, while the program was copied to memory; and if the Palm crashed before the program was exited, the program would still be in memory, since programs executed "in place" from their position in memory. (I believe the newest Palms now have separate storage and program memory, so maybe things have changed.)
Read my tirade against MS and their lack of support for real DirectX that I posted earlier. MS has crap support for 3D, even when you're using the PPC with the most awesome graphics chip ever to be placed in a PDA, ever (the Intel 2700G on my Dell Axim X50v). I get lousy lousy gameplay (well gameplay that's not up to the standards of the 16 meg card I have) on most games, because there is no native support in the OS for the chip.
That's nice. I still see more advanced games for Pocket PC, and they all run fine on other devices.
Define quirky. I've never had a problem installing apps or using them from an SD card. Ever. And I've used them from the beginning. This is FUD.
It is not FUD. Clearly you haven't used them from the beginning; I had numerous annoyances on my Palm m130, back when SD support was new on Palm OS. It worked, but it still had to copy programs from SD to memory every time I tried to execute them. It wasn't fast, either. Also, this post confirms that there are still issues.
Palm OS supports the SD standard. Period. Quit with the FUD.
Why do you call everything you don't agree with FUD? I said SD when referring to SDIO, so what? That doesn't make it FUD, and it doesn't make you a better person for calling it FUD.
What some Palm devices don't support is SDIO, which is the modified standard that allows what appears to be a SD slot to be used as a peripheral interface.
It's not an issue of not supporting SDIO so much as there not being drivers for many SDIO devices.
Yes - 'I run quite a few apps from a 512 MB SD card.'
I know at one point, software on a SD card was copied into RAM before being executed. This caused problems with the functionality of some applications, and if the Palm crashed (IIRC) you'd get stuck with the copy of the program still in memory after resetting it. Compare this to a Pocket PC, which has separate storage and program memory, and loading a program from the SD card works just like loading it from storage memory.
I stopped using my Palm within a year of getting it. The primary reason was because the battery was dead. But anyway, I got a Pocket PC and never looked back. I'd been looking at Pocket PCs ever since I accidentally stumbled across a Pocket PC software site and found out about what they could do (compared to the Palm). The only thing I ever missed was powerOne Graph, and now I have that thanks to StyleTap, which lets me run Palm OS applications.
I agree with the programming thing; I can develop Pocket PC applications with.NET and C#/VB.NET (and I assume the other.NET languages too), use Access/SQL Server CE databses (possibly even MySQL/SQL Server/PostgreSQL over the Internet/LAN), and use the same code on Windows and on Windows Mobile.
Overall, I really wish I had gotten a Pocket PC to start out with.
That only matters if you're running multiple applications at once. Not something you usually do on a PDA.
You can play music and do other things at the same time. I like doing that. You can also get on AIM or IRC while surfing the Web. Or (my favorite) play Bejeweled or surf the Web while you should be doing something else, and easily switch between them.
Cleartype is kind of secondary, since Palm doesn't even support vector fonts. But when your screen is only big for maybe 20 words of text, bitmap fonts are perfectly fine.
If you're reading webpages or actually looking at the screen for more than a few seconds at a time, this becomes very useful. It makes a pretty big difference.
Fast processors are not desirable for PDAs. They drain the battery, and all they're really good for is heavy-duty gaming.
Wrong. Fast CPUs are needed to render complex webpages, to render JPEGs, etc. If all you need is basic organizer functionality, slow CPUs are fine. But these fast CPUs do not necessarily drain the battery (they scale back to slower speeds, like modern laptop CPUs, and many new CPUs are more powerful while using less power than their predecessors.)
Given the size of a PDA screen, there's not a lot you can do with that extra resolution.
320x240 is a significant increase over 160x160. The difference between resolutions may not *seem* like that much, but after actually using the larger one, you'll wonder how you ever survived with a smaller resolution.
Mine is "a simple API that's well documented and well suited to the job at hand." Good PDA apps are not shrunken desktop apps!
I don't see much of an argument there. From what I've heard, the PalmOS API is fairly archaic.
As for.NET -- if you consider that a must-have for developement, there's not a lot I can say!
I guess you've never used.NET, or have such a closed mind that you'll say bad things about Microsoft products no matter what. Also, are any of those alternative development environments you talk about fully-featured e.g. can you write a full-featured application in them? do you get access to most (if not all) of the host APIs?
Again, I prefer a separate device. Digital voice recorders are not expensive.
That's a weak argument. PalmOS _does not_ have this capability in many devices. I find it extremely useful that I can just start recording on my Pocket PC or on my cellphone. Then, I can easily copy that to my PC (on the PPC) or email it to myself (on the cellphone).
And Palm hardware prices go down too.
A Pocket PC will do more for the money.
For some stupid reason, a hard reset doesn't accomplish this: you have to open up the system and disconnect the battery.
I'm glad my Pocket PC has an easily-removable, user replacable battery.
Still, I probably won't switch to PPC systems -- as bad as Palm has gotten, anything from Microsoft has to be 10 times more buggy.
You can be closed-minded like that if you like, but I've found that my Pocket PCs are overall less buggy. I like the choice of input methods, too.
This point is debateable. Any color PalmOS device with a 320x240 screen can look just as good or better than a PocketPC device.
I think ClearType is noticably better.
Debateable. I like the fact that apps open instantly on the Palm and browsing on a modern Palm is fast and compatible with most websites.
I find NetFront for Pocket PC to be comaptible with every website I go to. Pocket PCs support Flash, so I can watch Homestar when I'm bored.
False. Almost all newer Palm devices use Xscale processors. My Treo has an Xscale processor in it, just like a PocketPC.
Not false. Pocket PCs have been using XScale (and recently, Samsung) CPUs for a few years. 312MHz XScale processors are the low-end CPUs on Pocket PCs; the high-end goes all the way up to 624MHz.
Again, if you develop Windows apps, this is nice. It sounds like this article was written by a Windows developer trying to plug PocketPC over PalmOS.
This is a definite advantage. With.NET support, you can program in a multitude of languages with one consistent API. And from what I've heard, the Pocket PC is easier to develop for than Palm (excluding.NET).
PalmOS can do this just fine. All you need is a third-party launcher like LauncherX or Zlauncher.
So, in other words, PalmOS itself can't do it. Definitely not impressive. My Pocket PC executes.exe files right off the memory card.
Agreed--the built-in ones aren't great. But again third-party stuff comes to the rescue. Lubak's Fonts4OS5 provides a bunch of beautiful bitmapped fonts (but not antialiased), while (to give a plug for my own commercial stuff) my own FontSmoother provides antialiased (admittedly, grayscale only) smooth fonts (converted from TTF/Type1 via two different GPL converters, though FontSmoother itself is shareware and closed source).
My Pocket PC has built-in antialiased fonts with ClearType.
Actually, non-hackish applications can be installed directly on a flash card without any utilities, though any databases that they use will have to be in RAM unless the app is designed to use databases in flash or unless you use a third-party utility.
My Pocket PC can execute programs right off of a SD card. Most Pocket PC programs use files that can be saved anywhere. Palm OS has some difficulties, due to its usage of "databases" instead of an actual filesystem.
I don't know the PPC world at all, but under PalmOS most crashes aren't a big deal--the system just resets and ten to twenty seconds later you're back up and running. Of course a really bad bug can cause nastier things (reset loops, hard resets, etc.), but that I assume can happen on any platform.
It's rare that my Pocket PC ever freezes, so I rarely even have to reset the thing.
The problem I have with the current crop of palms is battery life. They now use lithium batteries which die after only 100-200 recharges and can be replaced only by the manufacturer. That means I have send my palm out once a year or so.
My Pocket PC (and every one I've ever used) has a replaceable battery. I bought an OEM extended capacity battery for my Pocket PC for $40. There's no need to take the device apart, and no warranty was voided. I can also keep more than battery charged up if I need to (but I don't see why I would. Someone out there might.)
If you buy from a manufacturer that sells their accesories and devices in stores (HP, but not Dell), batteries aren't hard to find -- you shouldn't have any trouble picking them up at stores like Staples or Best Buy.
Yes, but they all suck. Graffiti (Block Input) isn't nearly as accurate as with a Palm device
I noticed it to be much more accurate and faster.
ActiveSync's continuous connection model is good in theory. In practice it's slow, crashes often (either the handheld, requiring a soft-reset or the PC-side, requireing either reloading ActiveSync or rebooting. And reloading ActiveSync needs to be done via a third party freeware program), and an overall resource hog. Backup functions suck on it too; you hard reset a palm, hotsync it and everything comes back. Hard-reset a PPC, and it refuses to acknowledge it as the same old pda. (Use Sprite backup instead, works great, but a tad pricey)
I haven't had any of these problems, whatsoever. And my Pocket PC has built-in backup software...
When I turn my T3 on, it has open whatever I was last working on, so it's trivial to have it switch on at the PalmOS 'Today' equivalent. If you turn it on by pressing the calendar button, then it'll bring it up straight away.
The same applies for a Pocket PC. But, the Pocket PC's Today screen (the main screen) shows an overview of the to-do list, calendar events, etc., and there is a multitude of plugins available for it.
I've got a decent 3D game called Space Combat on my Palm. There are others available.
Pocket PC wins here; Palsm are just recently getting capability that Pocket PCs have had for awhile. Therefore, there's a lot more advanced games for Pocket PC.
I run quite a few apps from a 512 MB SD card.
I remember when I used a Palm, this was extremely quirky. Does Palm OS execute programs directly from their location on the SD card yet?
Plenty of SD support though, which is just fine for cameras, wifi, gps, etc.
Not really. A lot of the SD hardware out there is designed for Pocket PC and only has drivers for it.
Well, the PSP locks you into MPEG4 and Sony's Memory Stick crap. And it definitely doesn't have good WiFi/Bluetooth support...
I don't even consider my Pocket PC an organizer; I consider it a pocket computer. It has excellent WiFi support; I can access my IMAP4 mailbox, most websites (with Flash support), IRC, AIM, and stream audio. Pocket PCs have been capable of doing all of these things for quite some time. I can also multitask. I have MiniStumbler on it, the pocket version of NetStumbler.
If you want an organizer, a cheap Palm will work. But if you buy a Pocket PC because it is actually a portable device that does many things a PC can, then you definitely don't want a Palm.
It is definitely not worthless. For people that use PDF files for business purposes, an unmodifiable/copy prohibited PDF file gives them some security against modification and distribution of only parts of a document.
While the technically adept can often get around these limitations, they are enough to keep most people from copying/modifying/printing.
You cannot assume that functionality is "standard" simply because the device is capable of doing something. Nowhere am I ever lead to believe that a V265 will have the functionality Verizon disables, on Motorola's site or anywhere. There is no expectation that a V265 will perform these disabled functions.
No. On Motorola phones, the same firmware versions are used on every phone of the same model using the same language. The SEEM and filesystem on the phone is customized in what's known as a flex. This is what limits what the firmware can and can't do, what stores carrier specific settings/limits, and what stores the files that come on the phone by default (any games, ringtones, pictures, etc.) The flex is customized according to the carrier's needs. Regardless if this is done by the carrier or Motorola, the firmware on (say) a Cingular and T-Mobile V600 could be the exact same, while the SEEM & default filesystem differ.
Please note that any two given phones of the same model may have different revisions of the firmware, e.g. newer versions with bugfixes.
that is what i mean, you dont actually pay for it. The phone is part of the contract. With many plans that i've had, if you cancel the plan in the middle, they want the phone back ( they tell you that when you get the phone)
What plans are you talking about? What you are saying is simply not true (on Verizon, Cingular, AT&T, Alltel, Nextel, and T-Mobile, and probably almost every other carrier in America.) The reduced price on the phone is in exchange for signing the contract, but no matter what, the phone is yours. You may choose to return within the contract-designated trial period, but after that period, the phone is yours and they don't want it back.
The phone is yours; otherwise, it would not be a sale and they would have little justification for charging you an early contract termination fee.
If someone wanted a phone back in the past, you didn't have to give it to them.
They are not the manufacturers of the phone. So what they're selling isnt a v265 - its a heavily crippled device that USED to be a v265. The v265 has specific features - look on the anufacturers site or in the manual that comes with it.
They are indeed selling a v265. It's not like they magically removed the parts that make it a v265. The manufacturer's site almost always says "Carrier dependent" or something to that effect for features that carriers may wish to not offer/disable: see Motorola's V265 product page.
Look at it like this - I offer to sell you a Toyota Prius hybrid. You figure "great - save a lot of money". Then, after you've bought it, you find out that I've removed everything that allows it to function as a hybrid - it now runs on gasoline only. And I own a lot of the gas stations in town. And I've modified the fill-up spout so that you can't get a fill-up from a competing gas station
That's a really, really bad analogy. Cars are sold strictly as a product; after buying a car, you can take it wherever you want to get gas and get maintenance, and you drive it on public roads, not roads owned by the dealer. When you buy a cellphone, you're buying a phone sold by a carrier or their dealers for use on that carrier's network with their services. If I buy a Honda from the nearest Honda dealer, they don't expect me to drive it on *their* roads. So, your analogy does not fit.
So, no fraud? Come on - they sold something without disclosing how it differed from a standard v265.
I see no description of a "standard" V265 anywhere that states that the V265 has these features that Verizon has disabled.
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Uh, yeah. Virtual PC for Windows has been out for a few years, before Connectix was acquired.
Of course it does/will.
For a home user where all they want is the cheapest computer possible, the Mac Mini will never win. For a home user that wants something cheap with a few extras, the Mac Mini probably still won't be cheaper. Even after the XP Pro addition, the Dell still ends up being cheaper most of the time, considering the extras you often can get.
At the Mac Mini's $500, you need a keyboard, mouse, and monitor. A Dell laptop (which obviously has all three built in) is $50-100 more. You can get a low-end Mac for $500 and need to buy a keyboard/mouse, or a low-end Dell laptop for $550...
Performance-wise... I personally wouldn't expect too much from the Mini... but then again, I wouldn't expect that much more from the Dells.
That's the way that DVDs work; the protected files aren't readable until CSS authentication takes place. Similar things will happen in Linux or Windows.
It's not any different than running a program in another OS. There's no noticable difference in loading programs from the SD card. They can be launched from anywhere on the SD card. I remember seeing a progress bar on my Palm, while the program was copied to memory; and if the Palm crashed before the program was exited, the program would still be in memory, since programs executed "in place" from their position in memory. (I believe the newest Palms now have separate storage and program memory, so maybe things have changed.)
That's nice. I still see more advanced games for Pocket PC, and they all run fine on other devices.
Define quirky. I've never had a problem installing apps or using them from an SD card. Ever. And I've used them from the beginning. This is FUD.
It is not FUD. Clearly you haven't used them from the beginning; I had numerous annoyances on my Palm m130, back when SD support was new on Palm OS. It worked, but it still had to copy programs from SD to memory every time I tried to execute them. It wasn't fast, either. Also, this post confirms that there are still issues.
Palm OS supports the SD standard. Period. Quit with the FUD.
Why do you call everything you don't agree with FUD? I said SD when referring to SDIO, so what? That doesn't make it FUD, and it doesn't make you a better person for calling it FUD.
What some Palm devices don't support is SDIO, which is the modified standard that allows what appears to be a SD slot to be used as a peripheral interface.
It's not an issue of not supporting SDIO so much as there not being drivers for many SDIO devices.
I know at one point, software on a SD card was copied into RAM before being executed. This caused problems with the functionality of some applications, and if the Palm crashed (IIRC) you'd get stuck with the copy of the program still in memory after resetting it. Compare this to a Pocket PC, which has separate storage and program memory, and loading a program from the SD card works just like loading it from storage memory.
Pocket PCs have nearly all of those, AND you aren't stuck with one vendor...
I agree with the programming thing; I can develop Pocket PC applications with .NET and C#/VB.NET (and I assume the other .NET languages too), use Access/SQL Server CE databses (possibly even MySQL/SQL Server/PostgreSQL over the Internet/LAN), and use the same code on Windows and on Windows Mobile.
Overall, I really wish I had gotten a Pocket PC to start out with.
You can play music and do other things at the same time. I like doing that. You can also get on AIM or IRC while surfing the Web. Or (my favorite) play Bejeweled or surf the Web while you should be doing something else, and easily switch between them.
Cleartype is kind of secondary, since Palm doesn't even support vector fonts. But when your screen is only big for maybe 20 words of text, bitmap fonts are perfectly fine.
If you're reading webpages or actually looking at the screen for more than a few seconds at a time, this becomes very useful. It makes a pretty big difference.
Fast processors are not desirable for PDAs. They drain the battery, and all they're really good for is heavy-duty gaming.
Wrong. Fast CPUs are needed to render complex webpages, to render JPEGs, etc. If all you need is basic organizer functionality, slow CPUs are fine. But these fast CPUs do not necessarily drain the battery (they scale back to slower speeds, like modern laptop CPUs, and many new CPUs are more powerful while using less power than their predecessors.)
Given the size of a PDA screen, there's not a lot you can do with that extra resolution.
320x240 is a significant increase over 160x160. The difference between resolutions may not *seem* like that much, but after actually using the larger one, you'll wonder how you ever survived with a smaller resolution.
Mine is "a simple API that's well documented and well suited to the job at hand." Good PDA apps are not shrunken desktop apps!
I don't see much of an argument there. From what I've heard, the PalmOS API is fairly archaic.
As for .NET -- if you consider that a must-have for developement, there's not a lot I can say!
I guess you've never used .NET, or have such a closed mind that you'll say bad things about Microsoft products no matter what. Also, are any of those alternative development environments you talk about fully-featured e.g. can you write a full-featured application in them? do you get access to most (if not all) of the host APIs?
Again, I prefer a separate device. Digital voice recorders are not expensive.
That's a weak argument. PalmOS _does not_ have this capability in many devices. I find it extremely useful that I can just start recording on my Pocket PC or on my cellphone. Then, I can easily copy that to my PC (on the PPC) or email it to myself (on the cellphone).
And Palm hardware prices go down too.
A Pocket PC will do more for the money.
For some stupid reason, a hard reset doesn't accomplish this: you have to open up the system and disconnect the battery.
I'm glad my Pocket PC has an easily-removable, user replacable battery.
Still, I probably won't switch to PPC systems -- as bad as Palm has gotten, anything from Microsoft has to be 10 times more buggy.
You can be closed-minded like that if you like, but I've found that my Pocket PCs are overall less buggy. I like the choice of input methods, too.
I think ClearType is noticably better.
Debateable. I like the fact that apps open instantly on the Palm and browsing on a modern Palm is fast and compatible with most websites.
I find NetFront for Pocket PC to be comaptible with every website I go to. Pocket PCs support Flash, so I can watch Homestar when I'm bored.
False. Almost all newer Palm devices use Xscale processors. My Treo has an Xscale processor in it, just like a PocketPC.
Not false. Pocket PCs have been using XScale (and recently, Samsung) CPUs for a few years. 312MHz XScale processors are the low-end CPUs on Pocket PCs; the high-end goes all the way up to 624MHz.
Again, if you develop Windows apps, this is nice. It sounds like this article was written by a Windows developer trying to plug PocketPC over PalmOS.
This is a definite advantage. With .NET support, you can program in a multitude of languages with one consistent API. And from what I've heard, the Pocket PC is easier to develop for than Palm (excluding .NET).
PalmOS can do this just fine. All you need is a third-party launcher like LauncherX or Zlauncher.
So, in other words, PalmOS itself can't do it. Definitely not impressive. My Pocket PC executes .exe files right off the memory card.
My Pocket PC has built-in antialiased fonts with ClearType.
Actually, non-hackish applications can be installed directly on a flash card without any utilities, though any databases that they use will have to be in RAM unless the app is designed to use databases in flash or unless you use a third-party utility.
My Pocket PC can execute programs right off of a SD card. Most Pocket PC programs use files that can be saved anywhere. Palm OS has some difficulties, due to its usage of "databases" instead of an actual filesystem.
I don't know the PPC world at all, but under PalmOS most crashes aren't a big deal--the system just resets and ten to twenty seconds later you're back up and running. Of course a really bad bug can cause nastier things (reset loops, hard resets, etc.), but that I assume can happen on any platform.
It's rare that my Pocket PC ever freezes, so I rarely even have to reset the thing.
Some Pocket PCs run Linux with an actually useful implementation, something I haven't really seen on a Palm.
My Pocket PC (and every one I've ever used) has a replaceable battery. I bought an OEM extended capacity battery for my Pocket PC for $40. There's no need to take the device apart, and no warranty was voided. I can also keep more than battery charged up if I need to (but I don't see why I would. Someone out there might.)
If you buy from a manufacturer that sells their accesories and devices in stores (HP, but not Dell), batteries aren't hard to find -- you shouldn't have any trouble picking them up at stores like Staples or Best Buy.
I noticed it to be much more accurate and faster.
ActiveSync's continuous connection model is good in theory. In practice it's slow, crashes often (either the handheld, requiring a soft-reset or the PC-side, requireing either reloading ActiveSync or rebooting. And reloading ActiveSync needs to be done via a third party freeware program), and an overall resource hog. Backup functions suck on it too; you hard reset a palm, hotsync it and everything comes back. Hard-reset a PPC, and it refuses to acknowledge it as the same old pda. (Use Sprite backup instead, works great, but a tad pricey)
I haven't had any of these problems, whatsoever. And my Pocket PC has built-in backup software...
The same applies for a Pocket PC. But, the Pocket PC's Today screen (the main screen) shows an overview of the to-do list, calendar events, etc., and there is a multitude of plugins available for it.
I've got a decent 3D game called Space Combat on my Palm. There are others available.
Pocket PC wins here; Palsm are just recently getting capability that Pocket PCs have had for awhile. Therefore, there's a lot more advanced games for Pocket PC.
I run quite a few apps from a 512 MB SD card.
I remember when I used a Palm, this was extremely quirky. Does Palm OS execute programs directly from their location on the SD card yet?
Plenty of SD support though, which is just fine for cameras, wifi, gps, etc.
Not really. A lot of the SD hardware out there is designed for Pocket PC and only has drivers for it.
I don't even consider my Pocket PC an organizer; I consider it a pocket computer. It has excellent WiFi support; I can access my IMAP4 mailbox, most websites (with Flash support), IRC, AIM, and stream audio. Pocket PCs have been capable of doing all of these things for quite some time. I can also multitask. I have MiniStumbler on it, the pocket version of NetStumbler.
If you want an organizer, a cheap Palm will work. But if you buy a Pocket PC because it is actually a portable device that does many things a PC can, then you definitely don't want a Palm.
It does nothing to stop unauthorized printing/copying (by copying, I'm referring to the clipboard.)
While the technically adept can often get around these limitations, they are enough to keep most people from copying/modifying/printing.
I would recommend trying a product other than ZoneAlarm.
You cannot assume that functionality is "standard" simply because the device is capable of doing something. Nowhere am I ever lead to believe that a V265 will have the functionality Verizon disables, on Motorola's site or anywhere. There is no expectation that a V265 will perform these disabled functions.
Please note that any two given phones of the same model may have different revisions of the firmware, e.g. newer versions with bugfixes.
What plans are you talking about? What you are saying is simply not true (on Verizon, Cingular, AT&T, Alltel, Nextel, and T-Mobile, and probably almost every other carrier in America.) The reduced price on the phone is in exchange for signing the contract, but no matter what, the phone is yours. You may choose to return within the contract-designated trial period, but after that period, the phone is yours and they don't want it back.
The phone is yours; otherwise, it would not be a sale and they would have little justification for charging you an early contract termination fee.
If someone wanted a phone back in the past, you didn't have to give it to them.
They are indeed selling a v265. It's not like they magically removed the parts that make it a v265. The manufacturer's site almost always says "Carrier dependent" or something to that effect for features that carriers may wish to not offer/disable: see Motorola's V265 product page.
Look at it like this - I offer to sell you a Toyota Prius hybrid. You figure "great - save a lot of money". Then, after you've bought it, you find out that I've removed everything that allows it to function as a hybrid - it now runs on gasoline only. And I own a lot of the gas stations in town. And I've modified the fill-up spout so that you can't get a fill-up from a competing gas station
That's a really, really bad analogy. Cars are sold strictly as a product; after buying a car, you can take it wherever you want to get gas and get maintenance, and you drive it on public roads, not roads owned by the dealer. When you buy a cellphone, you're buying a phone sold by a carrier or their dealers for use on that carrier's network with their services. If I buy a Honda from the nearest Honda dealer, they don't expect me to drive it on *their* roads. So, your analogy does not fit.
So, no fraud? Come on - they sold something without disclosing how it differed from a standard v265.
I see no description of a "standard" V265 anywhere that states that the V265 has these features that Verizon has disabled.
Please stop making things up.
I just showed you the customer agreement. It does have any of your "hypothetical" stipulations.