I know, but the carrying-a-separate-thing-around annoyance is bigger than the keyboard annoyance. And SwiftKey helps a LOT. I hated the onscreen keyboard much more on iOS than I do on my Android.

It attaches to the phone, I thought... So, carry as one slightly larger thing. Easy cheesey!

(Yes, sometimes I am the little devil on peoples shoulders)

yeah...it's a case. i got one for my brother's gf for Christmas because she had just gotten an iphone and wasn't thrilled with the touchscreen keypad.

Sound is really important. I found Producing Great Sound for Digital Video very helpful.

I've ordered it Rob! Thanks so much. I'm investing so much in this process, there is no point in doing it anything less that the best I can.

How do I tell if my laptop has Bluetooth? I'm assuming that's different from the wireless capability. I want something to integrate with my phone, but I suspect I need a widget to plug into my laptop to actually utilize the Bluetooth capabilities.

If I do need a widget, technically called a dongle, I believe (which sounds obscene), what kind should I get?

Google Desktop has gone away -- it's been a while since I checked anything about it, so the fact that it's been gone for almost a year is par for the course.

Of course, I have desktop widgets I'm still using every day, which I'd be very sad to lose entirely.

Is there any successor to this group of widgets and a store-like place to acquire them?

Argh. Cablevision pushed through some kind of update to my modem last night that broke my internets and I finally got it working again, but now about every third URL I go to is coming up with the Cablevision "domain not found" search page. This was not happening before and I do not want it to happen now. What router setting do I need to tweak to make the Omnibar work again?

[eta: Ok, got it. "Opt out of DNS assistance" my ASS.]

Hmph.

Sony says I have to have at least ten dead pixels before my warranty coverage kicks in. Somebody remind me in February to see if it looks any worse, or I should buy extended coverage, maybe.

Admittedly it's only a little smudge, but I don't like the idea that it's broken and unfixable.

So last week I bought an Apple TV and found it pretty much unusable. Mostly the problem is with the sound--even with nothing playing, there's pops coming from the speakers while my TV is using the Apple TV as its source. While playing music the sound cuts out for a fraction of a second about every 10 seconds. Also, there is a small amount of snow on the screen.

I tried using a different HDMI port on my TV and tried a different HDMI cable, but no nothing changed. So today I exchanged the Apple TV for a new one. It has the same problems.

Any ideas? My BlueRay drive is connected to my TV via HDMI cable and it sounds fine.

Doesn't it seem likely that it's not the AppleTV if you are having the same problem?

Can you plug your AppleTV into someone else's TV?