With Virgin/Sprint, the only real data problem I sometimes have (when I have phone coverage) is sharing photos on Twitter. Otherwise, voicemail/text notification issues are similar to what I had with T-Mobile (which had the best coverage/reception at my place).

To me, that's a pretty non-essential problem when compared to how much more using AT&T/Verizon would cost.

And then, there's the general question of coverage in remoter areas, which IME seems best with Verizon, then AT&T.

So, yeah, there is a trade-off. If I needed to be in phone/data contact constantly for work, I would probably upgrade.

But right now for me the $600+ per year aren't worth it.

Thanks. Part of why I've resisted a smartphone is because I don't want to be in contact for work, so I'm not worried about that at all. (If they really wanted me in constant contact, they would buy me an iPhone.)

Well, my Tivo is completely dead. Earlier in the week it was able to stay on for about 20 minutes before crashing, now it doesn't even make it past the Powering Up screen.

Before I send it to Weaknees, does anyone have good things to say about Elgato EyeTV? I already have a Mac Mini plugged into the TV so I'm wondering if I can consolidate a bit.)

Tommy, did you download the Adobe products? I'm trying to work out if it's worth it. I have Elements 10 on two machines (bless that license, bless it to bits!), and a...PS6 or something on my PC...but I'm interested in giving some of the other apps a try on OS X Lion (Illustrator!) but if it's a lot of work for little return, enh.

Jessica, I live in fear of a dead TiVo. It's been doing odd things recently--not a lot, but enough to make me paranoid. Yes, the new models look lovely, but FUCKING LIFETIME ACCOUNT.

So, nervous. I wish you luck--I don't know anything about EyeTV.

I love Elgato EyeTV! It's awesomesauce, as far as I'm concerned. I use an HD Homerun to record QAM channels because there's no such thing as OTA reception here, and I've been very happy with the results. I'm on the free TVGuide listings subscription that came with my last hardware purchase, istr having some difficulty setting up season pass style recordings when I didn't have that, but with it everything I want to do is a piece of cake. It doesn't suggest shows I might like the way TiVo does, but that's the only functionality I can think of that it lacks.

Oh, and you can remotely view your recorded shows and (I think) live tv (I am sure about recorded shows as I have tested that) on iPhones or iPads (possibly other platforms, I have an all Apple ecosystem at the moment so I don't know) streaming over the internet without having to download or export to iTunes or anything. Burning to DVD requires Toast, I believe, but is easy. And you can convert recordings to iPod friendly format. Blah blah blah - I really like it.

Tommy, did you download the Adobe products?

Jon scared me away:

According to various comments at the site that was touting the free download, you need to use a MacOs that can run the powerpc emulator Rosetta. Snow Leopard has this, but it doesn't install by default. Rosetta is neither included nor supported in Mac OS X v10.7 "Lion" or later.

Well, scared away for now, anyway. I didn't feel like installing Rossetta if it was unsupported. (I'm on Mountain Lion.)

Maybe if I get bored at work tomorrow I'll try it.

ION, finally signed up for iTunes Match. I just noticed today they've increased the number of songs to 25,000--more than my 22,000, so I can Match all my tunes.

Oh, and speaking of iTunes Match--anyone here use it? If it works well it means I can buy a MacBook Pro Retina and not worry about getting a big SSD that can hold all my crap--I'll just keep all my crap on my 17" MacBook Pro with the big HD and rely on the cloud for my tunes on the hypothetical new 'puter.

The TiVo HD in the bedroom died last year and we decided to not replace it and the one in the living room acts up occasionally and we will have to really do some serious looking before we decide to replace it. The lifetime subscriptions are just not that tempting now and they have stopped offering hardware upgrade to lifetime owners so you end up getting locked into outdated gear.

Well, Weaknees thinks it's the hard drive, which would be a $99 repair plus the cost of the drive. (I could just order a new drive and swap it out myself, but then if the problem turns out to be the power supply or something else, I'd be out of luck.)

So it'll be an expensive fix but not as much as a new lifetime service sub. Damn those are pricey. The multi-unit discounted price now is $200 more than I paid for mine the first time around.

EyeTV is tempting but I don't know if I want a whole new thing! And price-wise, it's not that much cheaper than fixing the Tivo. Hmm.

Today, I'll be stopping at Radio Shack for an OTA antenna on my way home so DH can cover the Globes for work this weekend. Fortunately he's not liveblogging this time so no need to rewind and fact-check during commercial breaks. But if we don't have a working DVR by Oscar time it's going to be a problem.

(Last resort is calling Cablevision and getting a DVR cablebox. I suppose there's a slight chance the hardware has improved since our last experience with them and it's no longer a worthless piece of crap that doesn't even work?)

Apparently there's some big security hole in Javascript right now, and we're all supposed to disable Java in our browsers?

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