I bought a theoretically dead, liquid damaged MacBook Core Duo 2 which turned out to have only a few things wrong with it: the power switch doesn't work because the keyboard connector cable is bad, the IR may not work, and I took its screen off to attach to a working MacBook that had a cracked screen.

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Technorati Tags: Zune

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While I have very mixed feelings about AT&T ("Your world. Delivered. to the NSA.) still the lure of the iPhone is very very strong. I'm free and clear on my current cell service through Alltel. I even held off on refreshing to new phones to avoid a recommitment to a new year-long plan, just to be free to switch to an iPhone if it looked as good as I thought it would.

With the announcement of AT&T's "affordable" (that is, not horrifyingly expensive) monthly plans, I'm ready to buy.

Except for this.

I can taste the disappointment. Even my wife has said "those iPhones sure look cool."

Come on, AT&T, I'm not that far out in the country.
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Not quite as sharp as the "iRaq. 10,000 volts in your pocket. Guilty or Innocent" posters from NYC several years ago, but definitely funnier than MadTV's parody of the iPhone launch a few months ago.

Check this image out. It came up on my screen this afternoon.

Now, what if I didn't want to restart the download?

And no, there wasn't a "quit" option in the menu bar, either.

Bad, bad design.

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Roughly Drafted does some great tech analysis.

In this article, they share some fascinating stuff I didn't know.

You should read the whole article, especially if you're considering rolling out an Exchange server in an enterprise environment.

One excerpt:

Because some problems are bigger than Apple, Different Computers has a new web site for the big problems in life that can't be solved with elegant technology. Instead, at Prepped for Anything we look at elegant answers for every other kind of problem. Check it out at preppedforanything.com.

Alltel doesn't build hardware of course. Anything they do has to be from the "back end"– the services they supply. With their new "celltop" service, it looks like they want to add lots of eye candy to the phones that can handle it.

Alltel is pretty well regarded in the Southeast regional market where they compete, coming out first in some customer satisfaction surveys. They happen to be my cell provider (for now) so I was pretty interested in seeing what "celltop" was. Looks like Alltel is trying to jam as much "look and feel" of the iPhone into their phones as possible.

At the moment they only offer this new service on the Samsung U520, which is not iSync compatible. Mark/Space's Missing Sync doesn't even support it. So it's a no-go for me. However, the "coming soon" section lists the Motorola RAZR v3m and Motorola KRZR, which are or may be iSync compatible.

Alltel may be getting something really right, though: thee web site suggests that development of new cells will be, if not open, at least be straightforward and welcomed by the company:

"Alltell will be providing an Alltel Celltop Cell Development Kit, with reference documentation, example code and submission process details to interested developers in the near future. "

I have to wonder if these phones (especially the Samsung) have the processing horsepower necessary to make these "cells" work with any sort of snap.

Will it have scrolling like the iPhone? No. Will it be as elegant as the iPhone? No. Will it cost anywhere near as much? No.