Dave M.

For me, it would be a "system monitor" monitor. :)

I have a bunch of applications that monitor various parts of my Mac Pro as well as monitor my MacBook when it is on. All those apps would get their windows moved to the Mimo 710.

Anyone notice how fast that Pre ad showed the user typing in Twitter? Are we trying to say that a physical keyboard will allow us to type that fast?

Yea, right.

Amen! I don't know what they were thinking with those ads. They freak me out. I would never buy a Pre if those were the only ads I ever saw for the phone.

Fair enough.

I still have some issues with opening a whole store for the sole purpose of demoing Windows and Office as well as the few other software products Microsoft sells. It just seems like overkill.

Showing Windows without all the "junkware" is great, but it's not realistic since it's pretty hard to find a system that doesn't put some amount on the system. It's true that Apple does put some "junkware" on their systems, but the nice thing about OS X is that by removing the folders that the "junkware" resides in, you are removing "all" the pieces of that junk. Uninstalling junkware on Windows doesn't always get all the pieces. DLL's and registry entries are usually left behind.

I'm not trying to bash Microsoft or Windows here. I'm just trying to comprehend what Microsoft is really thinking by opening up a store.

Actually, why not work deals with BestBuy and other Big Box stores to put a Microsoft section in the store like Apple has done with BestBuy so that patrons aren't hassled by sales folks trying to sell them all kinds of products other than Microsoft's. That would be way more cost effective than opening up stores themselves.

Level 5: Are *you* serious? You think that the MS store is going to sell any hardware at all? How can they sell Windows Mobile devices? Which companies do they sell? If they do sell hardware like Desktop and Noteboook computers, which company's do they sell?

Sure, they can sell Zune and Xbox as far as hardware goes, but really, why would I bother going into an MS store to buy those when I could just as easily go to a BestBuy.

No, I don't see Apple stores selling a "ton" of software. I see them selling their professional line of software and yes, there are other titles, but there is not a "ton" of other titles. They barely cover a small shelf in the store I visit.

Lets take a look at your list of what you think will be sold there...

* Windows, Office, sure
* Windows Mobile devices, not likely. As I stated before, who do they choose to sell? Not to mention, they would have to work with many carriers to allow the devices to be activated in the store.
* Zune, XBox 360, sure...
* Microsoft Sync Demo car decks/Media Center Demos, Great, who cares? They are not going to be able to sell those items. Who is going to install the MS Sync products? Media Center software is not sold separately. It has to be sold with a computer.
* Keyboards/Mice/Presentation devices, pretty much the rest of your list. Again, I'm not going to travel way out of my way to an MS store when I can go to a much closer BestBuy or Office Max for that matter to get those items.

One item you didn't mention is media players (other than Zune of course)... Opps, never mind Microsoft has screwed over other media player manufacturers enough that I would assume that there are not many that would want to be featured in an MS store.

It's going to be quite interesting to see what actually is going to be sold at an MS store. If hardware is sold there, how do they work out which manufacturer is sold there? Would Dell have to pay Microsoft to get shelf space?

I use 'Get Lyrical' to grab lyrics for all my music. Link: http://shullian.com/get_lyrical.php

I just select all the tracks in iTunes and click on the "Tag Selection" button and in about 30 minutes (I have over 16,000 tracks) I have lyrics for all the music in my library it can find.

These other programs like GimmiSomeTune cause the music playing to stop for a half second while it adds the lyrics to the song. I found that rather annoying and found Get Lyrical to be really fast and simple to use.

You might want to check you facts before posting articles too. Mind you, it doesn't really matter that much, but Flight Control has never cost more than $0.99. A very quick search over at AppShopper.com will show you the initial cost of the app and any changes made to the price or updates since the applications release.

No need for panic, just unplug the iPhone and plug it back in again. It took about 5 cycles to get iTunes to activate the 3.0 software.

The servers are getting slammed. Fortunately, the activation part doesn't take that much server time to do. You should be able to get your phone or iPod up and running in no time at all. :)

Non game would be: Grocery IQ
Game would be: Edge

When I want to clean up my hard drives, I open up my favorite tool for the task: OmniDiskSweeper. http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnidisksweeper/

Now a free program, it scans your hard drives and shows you a list of all your directories and how much space they are taking up. This allows you to focus on places in your hard drives that take up large amounts of space.

For whatever reason Apple decided not to show the size of the files when searching using SmartFolders. Or at least SmartFolders that look for files that are greater than a specific size. OmniDiskSweeper focuses on sizes, so it only shows sizes and file names/extensions.

When I first got my Mac's, back in 2006, both of them came with OmniDiskSweeper already installed. I made sure to upgrade them to the latest versions even though that cost me since this program is well worth it. Now, OmniGroup has changed their sales model to focus on more professional programs so that utilities like DiskSweeper, OmniWeb, OmniDazzle, etc... are all free. It's well worth checking out.