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In their article Want an iPhone? Beware the iHandcuffs published today, the Times makes a number of good points. Probably the best one is: As some wags have said, the initials D.R.M. should really stand for “Digital Restrictions Management.” One of the reasons I’m reluctant to switch to an Apple computer is because of the apparent lack of alternatives on the Mac. I don’t use Microsoft’s software or formats for music, I use AudioGrabber to rip to MP3 format and then listen to those in iTunes. ...

Last summer, I bought a 40" Sony Bravia at Costco. I did it knowing that 1080p was going to be what I really wanted but also aware that there’s not much out there that you can use at 1080p. Only recently have Blu-Ray and HD-DVD players become available for under $5000 and there’s almost nothing available for either of them. We have cable internet service from Comcast. It’s not cheap at $53/month but it’s rarely down, it’s very fast and it’s gotten faster. I don’t like Comcast but let’s not go there. ...

What’s crapware or craplets? Ars Technica says: Just what are craplets? It’s a cute nickname for all of the software an OEM installs on your new Windows PC before it arrives on your doorstep. In $60 to keep crapware off of a Windows PC? Ken Fisher talks about how much it OEMs - Original Equipment Manufacturers, like Dell or Hewlett-Packard - might want to sell you a machine that’s not loaded with limited and trial versions of software. Because people aren’t likely willing to pay anything extra, Microsoft can fume but not do anything about it. ...

Ars Technica has a write-up of some of the features available in yet-to-be-released Windows Vista Ultimate. There’s 3 features and none of them sound very appealing. In reverse order: a Texas hold ’em game. Yeah, we know, this is extremely popular. We have it featured in the latest James Bond movie. But “Hold ‘Em may cost you time, but your money is safe because the chips are not real?” Pass. BitLocker is kind of interesting. It encrypts your hard drive so it can’t be stolen. It also can’t be read by hacking tools or another operating system. Seems a lot more useful on laptops than desktop systems. Also makes it impossible for people to dual-boot with Linux and use their Vista files as they can now with XP. DreamScene sounds distracting, to say the least. Instead of a still image, you’re able to set a video file as your background. A few people think that ice melting or wheat blowing would be interesting but most people think it would be annoying beyond belief. I’m in the latter camp: isn’t that the reason we hate the “punch the monkey” ads, because they’re on the edge of our vision but moving? We’re hard-wired to treat movement on the edge of our vision as threatening - it might be a tiger about to leap on us. Or just another person with a club. Windows Vista Ultimate combines all the various features of Tablet Edition, Windows Media Center, etc. Hard to believe that it’s going to be needed on one machine. So I think sales will be tiny. ...

On my work accounts, we’re using SpamAssassin. For personal mail, I’ve switched from Hotmail to gmail in part because Hotmail does a poor job of detecting spam. Lately, I’ve been getting frustrated by the amount of spam that makes it past the spam detecting routines on the mail servers. I don’t really want to do something involved on my own system. So what to do? Junk Mail Controls gives instructions on how to adjust the spam filter in Thunderbird so it’s more sensitive to spam. I’m hoping that this helps reduce spam while still avoiding false positives. I have to say that gmail and Thunderbird have been stellar on this, which is a good thing. I’d much rather get a few annoying spam messages than lose real mail into the spam hopper. ...

I’ve (mostly) switched from Outlook to Thunderbird for mail. If you, like me, subscribe to a few mailing lists, you know it’s a pain dealing with them. If I don’t have time to read the issue from 6 months ago, it’s nice to have it just disappear. No stress trying to decide whether to do a quick scan or just do a bulk delete. Just delete them. One of the features I’ve missed with Thunderbird was that ability to delete messages automatically. No stress. Well, unless you delete the wrong messages. But Thunderbird has good filters and so it’s easy to avoid that. ...

Just Cancel the @#%$ Account is a neat write-up of experiences with 32 online services, including big names like AOL, Earthlink, New York Times, Netflix and Vonage.

Redeye VC: Deja vu has a nice write-up on Zillow offering “Make Me Move”: A homeowner can easily post a Make Me Move price without exposing any personal information. Zillow then enables interested buyers to contact the owner through an email anonymizer. It’s a feature that I wish we had when my wife and I were looking for a new home. We knew - from driving around and around - that there were certain houses that we would be interested in. In retrospect, I wish we’d done the simple thing of leaving a letter on the front steps saying “if you ever sell ..” ...

Found a reference to Amazon selling 1000 Xbox 360s for $100. Which is what one would be worth to me. So I showed up and tried it, figuring that I wasn’t going to get one of these: However, I was interested in how the process worked and also wanted one of the alternate items. I was logged in to my Amazon account on both Internet Explorer 7 and FireFox 2. Things worked fairly normally until about 10:59, when the system became totally non-responsive for about 10 minutes and not very responsive (meaning I got 1 session to work but none of the others) for 15. ...

I’ve dealt with my local phone company for many years. From the roll-up of Pacific Northwest Bell into US West and then the merger with Qwest, prices have gotten higher and higher and the reliability has gotten a little worse. At some point my wife or I will decide that we don’t really need the land line and it will go away. The thing that’s most annoying about them is the amount of advertising they’re doing. They’re constantly on the radio, TV, billboards, in the newpaper, ads on the internet and direct mail pieces. It seems obvious that they’re not getting a lot of takers. Why not? Well, they could start with the big disclaimer on every ad. Anything that they’re promising on the front, they’re taking away on the back. ...