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!

Thanks omnis. The coverage in my area looks pretty thick. I'll get with local users next.

Thank you Tom! ::hearts::

I ended up hitting wal-mart, but they had absolutely nothing useful, and then I went to Fred Meyer. I got a component switcher, rca to rca, and svideo to svideo even though I was 90% sure it wasn't going to work.

I hooked up the svideo from the pc to the switcher box and the 3.55mm from from the audio jack to the switcher box; then plugged the rca in the switcher's output and into the front-load composite slots on the tv.

The audio went through fine, so I knew the box worked, but the svideo was blank slate. In one of my many attempts to make it work, I connected the other svideo to rca cable to the switcher box, and miraculously got a flicker of connectivity, but nothing stable. I think I just have to admit that the stupid svideo port is busted beyond my ability to repair.

I bought a vga to rca cable off ebay for three bucks, and I'm going to return the other stuff to Fred Meyer. Stupid computer! Stupid Sunday project!

SA -

it might be the video driver. My Dell stopped working all of the sudden and I could no longer hook my laptop up to the tv. I googled this issue once upon a time, and I thought there might be a driver problem.