any opinions on the flip video camera? i'm considering getting one and would like to hear opinions before i bite the bullet.

any opinions on the flip video camera?

Cash adores it. Jess adored it with some reservations about the sound until DZ decided to use it as a toy boat. I and a ton of people I work with adore it, with the caveat that the software is good for the things it does well but limited for more ambitious projects. Gud was thinking of one for Xmas gifts, which probably means it will be tested in space soon. Did I miss anyone?

have you used it at concerts? does the sound get distorted in loud environments?

I'm so behind the times when it comes to cellphone stuff. Is it possible to get a 3G data-only plan from someone? My current cellphone is not 3G, but my Aspire One netbook has 3G data capability.

Yes, it is. I have a data only plan from Verizon for my evdo modem. It's sixty bucks a month for 5G of data. I signed a contract so I could get my little stick for free, but they also offer a month-to-month.

Not sure about which carrier would work for you, but there should be something available.

does the sound get distorted in loud environments?

On the old Ultra model I had, the mic was on the back, so it would probably get more of the crowd noise than the band. But I think I remember Amych saying the current models have the mic (or a second one?) on the front.

I've never tried the flip in a crowd, but I can confirm the front and back mics.

I so desperately want the HD one, but I can't justify it...

eta chat transcript (with permission):

me: have you tried out a flip in a crowd situation? concert or whatnot?

boss: yes. it wasn't too bad, given the poor lighting. big gym for a contra dance

me: how's the sound in that situation? All of my footage has been fairly quiet.

boss: meh. I wasn't trying to get much in the way of sound. I'd say it captured the general background noise fairly well and the band not so well, but it was good enough for what I wanted

hmm...that may have just talked me out of it. thanks for the info, amych and Jessica!

bon, my iteration of Word 2007 automatically creates lists whether I want it to or not. Is the list icon highlighted in the top bar while you're typing?

Thanks Jess and Gud for their Word advice. Unfortunately I lost internet for a day -- unrelated issue-- and redid the document as a regular bulleted list, which did multilevels as normal with no problem. So still don't know what the problem was, although I can say that the multilevel list icon switched off every time I pressed enter.

Behold - I have seen the future!

ioDrive solid-state hard drive is world's fastest, but not cheap

This Fusion-io ioDrive prototype is a solid-state hard drive that plugs into the PCI bus, that place inside your computer where video cards go, and that means a lot of your computing will go a whole lot faster.

How fast? It reads data at 473 megabytes per second (MB/sec), nearly twice as fast as that Micron solid-state drive we were raving about last month, and blowing away any spinning hard drive with ease. So far, this test unit only works on 64-bit systems, and you can't use it as a boot drive. But when you can, expect startup times to be a lot quicker. Also you'll see applications launch a lot faster, and anything you do that accesses a hard drive to be noticeably accelerated.

However, in comes that fundamental truth: "Good, fast, cheap — pick two." These drives will be really good and enormously fast, but not cheap, starting out at $3,000 for a smallish 80GB unit, up to a jaw-dropping $14,400 for a proper 320GB drive. Those prices will drop a lot, and quickily, because someday soon all hard drives will be made this way.