bonny, my experience is that sound quality is not an issue, but connectivity is. I haven't had a landline in yonks, but recently my BB has been dropping a lot of calls from home. I would research what AT&T's coverage is in your area and how satisfied people are with it.

Do you have a cell phone at all? It's not clear from your post, but $115 for DSL and landline seems pretty high to me. Not necessarily higher than iPhone plus DSL, but I suspect you're not getting a great deal as is. To me, the value of a cell phone is significantly higher than the value of a landline though, so it might well be worth the uptick.

Don't know specifically about iPhone, but I can use my BB and my Sprint phone while plugged in to the charger. I can't imagine iPhone would take a step backwards on that without it being widely known, but Apple's made some crazy decisions in the past so?

End of the day, if it's not worth it, eBay it.

brenda, I've never had a cellphone.

I've resisted on the grounds of sound quality, price, having a stable communication in emergencies, etc.

I feel very old school, but I've also gotten on pretty well without a cell all these years. My friends, however, do not agree with this assessment.

You are totally right about me not having a very good deal but every time I've considered ditching Verizon, I become overwhelmed with the possibilities and crawl back into my ludite cave.

I would check coverage. In SoCal, my coverage was a little spotty. I'm guessing due to the topography and sheer volume of users. Since moving to Dallas, AT&T coverage is awesome, thus making my iPhone that much better. So much so, since moving to Dallas, I no longer have a landline. I did order a MagicJack, which is a $20/year VoIP. But I hardly use it.

As far as quality of call, seems just fine to me. If I find I can't hear the caller well due to background noise or quiet talker, I put in the ear buds that comes with the iPhone. Then they are talking into both ears.

Good point about the headphones! I hadn't thought of that benefit.

I'll check with users in the area to find out about coverage.

Still struggling to figure out the package/price issues.

Bonny, if this helps, here is a zoomable color coded map of the US that shows AT&T coverage. [link]

If you are in BEST zone, you will get awesome coverage (that's what the bulk of Dallas is, most notably, my apartment and work). If you are in a moderate area, you will be fine outside, but, depending on the building, and the weather, and a mosquito passing gas, you could get full bars to no bars in 30 seconds. Yes, my old job was in a moderate zone, so I would sit there and watch the service bounce around in amazement. What? there were times we were working until midnight, and waiting for Lighting to write cues. Don't judge me.

LN, google mobilizer is working for me. Thanks for the tip!

awesome! I am pleased.

Grrr. I can't get my s-video to component setup to work from my ancient D600 dell latitude. I know I've gotten this to work before, but it's been years since I've tried. Despite the cable being plugged into the s-video female and plugged into the video component of the tv, the damned tv isn't showing up in the display options of the ATI driver.

At this point, unless anyone has other clever suggestions, it seems like there's one of two problems: either the port itself is buggered beyond my repair, or the cable is shit and needs to be replaced.

Of course, radioshack doesn't actually stock s-video to component, or vga to component (which would be the other video output option on this computer), so I can't run out and get one today. I just want to watch an avi file on my damn television.

Where do you good folk buy your cables?

1. use one of my old Mac ADB keyboard cables.

2. monoprice.com

Uh, I got nothing, except I wanted to say, Happy Birthday SA!