I'm pay as you go with Virgin Mobile, and have had an excellent and fairly inexpensive time with it, considering.

I got totally dicked by AT&T, Cingular, and T-Mobile in rapid succession. It was like being a short nerd in a room full of tall bullies who've got my lunch money. I finally switched to pay-as-you-go with Virgin Mobile, and I'm happy with them.

I'll second Cingular. I've had it for about 6 years now. I will say, I've a pretty cool contract. I managed to get a special when text messaging was introduced, so all texts are free, and nights start at 8:00. YRMV

I've had good luck (since numbers got portable, customer service got way more customer friendly) and good service with Verizon.

Generally, when there are coverage issues, I keep service better than people with other carriers. But I do know that when there is a blind spot with them? You can absolutely count on dropping the call there.

But if you run your phone over with your car? They're gonna laff and laff. Polite mocking.

TiVO to go for the Mac: [link]

I had Cingular for about four years and had few problems with it, but then again, someone I know has gotten dicked around by every single phone company out there. It depends what you want, really--if internet access and texts are more important, T-Mobile (as Gris pointed out) is better about making that accessible (what with the Sidekick and all). I've never had any problems with Cingular in terms of coverage area or minutes, and I think they're reasonable enough if all you're going to use the connection for is making calls and texting--they have competitive non-peak times, which can be very helpful if you're doing a lot of calling.

We used Verizon like seven years ago, and never bothered to learn any more after we switched to Cingular, so I don't know about them. And we never got Virgin Mobile in my area, but the folks who had it in the UK seemed happy enough with it.

The thing I like about Cingular (and I'm a reserved Cingular customer - I think their prices are a bit too high, but their coverage is pretty good) is the rollover minutes. BF and I share (we have familytalk and add a line for $10) and if it weren't for rollover, we would have $1,000 bills.

Satisfied Cingular customer for about 6 years now.

Does anyone know why I can no longer access Gmail's website using IE? It keeps timing out saying the security ceritificate or something has expired for the site and won't open. I can access all my other sites just fine with IE.

I can access gmail using firefox fine, too.

I've tried logging off of gmail, restarting my computer, restoring my default security settings, I get fuck all. And it's starting to piss me off.

Hey, does anyone know why Apple's iPods all (except for the original Shuffle, I think) have proprietary connections?

The original reason for that connector was the introduction of USB iPods. Prior to that, all iPods had regular 6-pin Firewire sockets on the top and you could use any Firewire cable to connect or charge them.

There wasn't enough room on the iPod for both a Firewire and a USB port, so some kind of combination connector was needed. Going to that particular connector allowed audio line-out, video out and acccessories like the card reader to be supported through the same port.