Microsoft Treo!!! --- or Palm Windows...

Palm has turned from a closed fist into an open palm, so to speak. The company has recently made the move to support its rival Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform on its once exclusive Palm Treo smartphone line. For more details on the new Treo 700w, go to http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/index.blog?entry_id=1233838. Let's just hope this kind of openness does not backfire in the way of Microsoft shutting this open "window" on this welcome "hand".

Moving is a hassle--- if you have DSL

This is my experience in progress. If you have SBC Yahoo! DSL and you are moving, good luck. In order for you to keep your email account at sbcglobal.net, you have to maintain a dialup account at the very least, with a working phone number. The worst thing you would ever do is call SBC and explain your situation, especially if you have to move immediately because someone bought your old house already and your new house is still being built. My experience is that I went through the voice prompts, which was hard to navigate, then talk to customer service, where they sent me to a different number, and then another person sent me to yet another number, which I found out it was the first number that I just dialed, and the person already hung up by the time I found out I was back in voice prompt limbo. Fortunately, my aunt works at SBC, and worked out a way so that our DSL was to be on a third line installed in her house. (She has two already.) Maybe later on in the future, I'll just switch to broadband cable, you know, COMCAST.

Kudos to the folks at broadbandreports.com, who helped me with speeding up my DSL connection though. They sped it up from 1536 kbps down/384 kbps up to 3072 kbps down/512 kbps up. Dslreports.com/Broadbandreports.com (the same site) is one of the sites mentioned in the A+ Complete Guide book from Sybex, in the section about Internet connectivity. They even have technicians from Internet Service Providers to help you, so you don't have to go through the hassle of contacting the actual ISPs themselves, because being stuck on their level 1 support lines is not the way to go. (Who wants to deal with Tier 1 anyway?)