For your next phone you may want to consider a new process that makes your phone water safe with no case required - Liquipel.

http://www.liquipel.com/

It seems really quite remarkable and for $59 will apparently give your new phone the ability to withstand a dunking in water with no ultimate ill effects (some drying out process may be required).

I think most people do not get insurance for their smartphones, thinking that the warranty alone is enough to cover them. But as you have learned, sometimes we make silly mistakes and the warranty simply does not cover such incidents. Thanks for the heads up on the various coverage plans available.

Chris - http://americanvisitorinsurance.com

G drives are made for macs You can get them with FireWire 800 and are pretty durable (video students Shlep them around alot where I work and they stay fast and reliable)

I've been happy using Seagate Passport drives with MacOS. Also check out these threads

http://questionland.com/questions/23104-im-looking-to-buy-a-portable-hard-drive
http://questionland.com/questions/21390-whats-everyones-backup-schema

On Twitter it is more loose connections than Facebook. If you received a review the terms note then probably the person/s you tried to friend did not want to accept because they don't feel they know you and inadvertently triggered that response through the system.

When you are new to Facebook it seems like a great idea to friend a lot of people but you may come to see that you don't value all of the contacts you coukd have.

As the previous poster (PP) said, Facebook is commonly used to connect with people you know -- old schoolmates, old friends, current friends, family, distant family, some coworkers, etc. That said there are Facebook groups that foster online community, I haven't really used them but I think my cousin has made a bunch of friends that way.

I only friend people that I've actually met and know to be interesting.

It keeps the signal to noise ratio low in my feed.

Hi, you can go for hosted PBX system. This system provides you with Interactive Voice Response which is a menu of options. So you do not need to have receptionist. Moreover, each of your employees can have a separate voicemail. You can also maintain your existing number. I am using Hosted PBX services from The Real PBX since the last six months and I haven’t encountered flaws in their service. You can check out their services.

Heh, I dunno but it brings to mind all the times in K-12 when teachers would tell us the calculator cannot do anything with out a human commanding it.

For 5 people I think Comcast would be a pretty safe bet.

Rarely, and usually only on really old (not cell) numbers, you won't be able to transfer certain types of numbers so you may end up paying for them to forward forever.

If you have a good internet connection and have the ability to do some QoS on the router to always allow priority and room for voice calls (it's not that hard to setup overall), I can say 8x8 is a decent VOIP phone company:

http://www.8x8.com/

We have had a good experience with 8x8's phone service/features and an okay experience with their support.

Our situation was different though... we had a physical phone system (PBX) at the 50ish person office that was starting to fail so we shopped around for new PBXes and ended up with a hosted VOIP setup. I originally objected to it because I wanted to keep the phone system on-site and managed by us, but that is a much more significant up-front investment.

Turns out 8x8 doesn't totally suck and is pretty cool in some ways, but the quality and reliability of your VOIP setup is 98% dependent on your internet connection.

Dan Savage thought of it and Anthony Hecht made it work.

I'm pretty sure it was Anthony Hecht, assisted by his vast army of trained monkeys.

Corianton Hale redesigned the physical paper and the website at around the same time, so he may have had some input into the creation of the blog as well; certainly the design elements and mechanics of posting comments and so on are mostly the same.

Dan Savage

Have you read any of the reviews of the Windows 8 consumer preview that was released on Feb 29? I don't see anything about Win8 that would make me want to have it as my desktop OS - maybe if it was faster, but I upgraded from a really old Dell w/XP to a Dell Inspiron w/Win7 one year ago and it's so fast I doubt I would see any improvement with Win8. I'm also not interested in having the Metro interface on my desktop - just as an example, here's a Tom's Hardware post on one ex-MS employee's opinion that Windows 8 needs to be fixed before release. (Edited my morning incoherence.)

You're really going to love going from XP to Win7; I definitely agree with getting 64-bit, because of the additional memory capacity. My Dell cost about $500, and it looks like they have the same deal for the same price.

Oh I know you didn't want hardware advice but you should get a new flatscreen monitor (I don't like Dell's monitors so I went to Fry's) and if you've got an older printer check to make sure it has a USB connector and that you can get Win7 drivers. Keeping an older printer (or other older components) that were made before Win7 came out is the biggest hassle - supposedly Win7 can find and install printer drivers automatically, but that's never worked for anyone I know.

Related advice - back up any irreplaceable data NOW. My guess is your computer is 3+ years old, copy off pictures, documents, etc to CD/DVD or an external drive.

I personally know someone who has sold their own book through Amazon, and they said they get the same amount whether a person buys a paper copy or a Kindle copy :)

I like T-mobile. They have a month to month if you but the equipment or you can do the 2 year contract.

Have you thought about tethering to your phone?

My boss likes his Verizon 4G thing that is built into his PC laptop, but my Macbook doesn't have anything like that built in. I researched external devices (USB) for a little bit before deciding they all sucked.

I got tethering added to my cell phone account and it's really useful every once in a while.

I assume you are referring to the CFL bulb, the compact fluorescent light bulb.

There is so much energy lost to the production of waste heat (over 90%) in a glowing filament bulb that the amount that goes into producing light is usually rated at less than 5% (it is in the 2-3% range for a standard 100w light bulb).

Just touching a standard bulb when it is on (be careful of getting burned) and a compact fluorescent bulb that is running should convince you of the efficiency difference.

The fluorescent light bulb is not new and the technology well understood. True that the compact models are a scaled down representation, but the professed life of the bulb should be fairly accurate. The life of any bulb is not usually stated as a time period of constant use but of a certain number of hours per day. Filament bulbs are rated to an expected number of total hours and recognizing the number of on/off cycles can put extra stress on the overall life of the glowing filament.

The technology is ever changing and improving. The emitted light spectra is becoming more complete, life length improving, and the route for ease in proper recycling of these bulbs is getting better.

The move to the next technology, light emitting diodes and eventually LED flexible panels and who knows what else will come quite quickly over the next few decades as design and lower cost in manufacturing evolves.

Don't worry about the OS. It's RAM, GHz and drive capacity that should concern you and everything else will fall into place. Get as much as you can afford because newer OS's require more and more RAM and GHz. And as you might have seen with Vista, a lot more that is supposedly minimally required.

Also, unless you need a server, start thinking about replacing the desktop with a laptop. True, Dell has come up with the monitor and keyboard only type of computer that the Mac has done for several years now (and not having that big box is really, really nice!), but I think most forecasters think the desktop is on its way out. Laptops, tablets, etc. are the future. And most importantly, they require much less space and have more easily mobile.

And I apologize for the hardware advice.

I have a WP7 phone. Works for me. Sometimes the route calculation is a little slower than on an iPhone (that might be my service with T-mo), but otherwise, it's pretty solid. It also has a hands-free option, where, once you select your route, you can hit Start, and it'll read the directions aloud to you and re-orient your map each time you get to a turn. Bing Scout can be useful, too -- when you're looking at a map, if you hit it, you can look at local restaurants, bars, cultural stuff, etc. I'm not sure how complete their listings are, but it can come in handy.

I've had a WP7 phone for almost a year now, and I am surprised at how much I love it. To be fair, I had an early-model Android before, and have only occasionally used friends' iPhones. I LOVE the integration with the calendar and my myriad accounts (including work email), and really, really love that it shows me my next appointment and location on my home screen without having to log in. I also use Zune, and that's been pretty seamless too. The Office integration is pretty sweet, too, though I really only use the OneNote feature.

If there's anything I wish they would splurge on, it's a really great camera. My camera sucks (both hardware and software), and I am not holding out hope that the next phone I get will be any better.

Important disclaimer: I do work for MSFT, but my feedback is based on my experience with WP7 and other phones. I have colleagues who are Mac geeks, and swear by their iPhones, so each to their own.

To answer your general question: no, there is no need to wait for Windows 8.

Nobody knows if it is going to suck or not, but my money is on it sucking (a la Vista). I am a fan of Windows 7.

Your current computer that runs XP probably won't run Windows 7 (or 8) very nicely, if at all, so if you want to upgrade, you're probably replacing your whole computer (which is good).

I'd buy a Dell. They make fine PCs and their support doesn't suck too badly. I bought my mom one.

I'm not a pc person , but windows is an operating system, they're not physically changing the machines that run it for windows 8 right? If you get a computer now you can upgrade to windows 8 layer if you want to ( but of course you'd have to pay to upgrade). I'd assume the upgrade would be cheaper than buying windows 8 flat out, but I don't know if it's a huge discount since I haven't had a pc since 98 so hopefully you'll get some pc users chiming in

Are there any programs you use that might have some issues with a new OS? I know that Photoshop OS notoriously buggy with new OS and usually requires some fixes when jumping up ( I usually wait 6 months when Mac releases a new OS to make sure they've fixes everything since it's the main program I use). If you're just using word processing you shouldn't have any problem since those are microsoft programs anyway

Have you looked at 8 online? Are there aspects of the program you're itching to have? If that's the case you may wanna wait a tad. If you don't really care either way then buy now and maybe upgrade later. The main thing is to make sure they're not making programs you use on a daily basis harder to use or obsolete and you're not traipsing all over the Internet looking for new drivers for printers and scanners and updates for all your programs. If you have hardware that needs drivers check out their sites and see if they've listed when things will be available or if they're already windows 8 ready. ( this may be less of an issue for pcs since most desktop equip is pc ready and fights more with macs but it's still worth looking into if your printer is several years old since they tend to get new drivers out for the newer models first. )

Arsenic7 is on the right path with an antenna, but having a Macbook will complicate that. Most of what he linked are antennas that expect to plug into desktop-sized network cards that do wifi. Macbooks don't have anything like that.

First off the good news is, in my experience, Macbooks and Apple products in general have really good wifi antennas in them to start with. Also, make sure your software is fully up to date (Apple icon->Software Update). Do everything it says because they may have firmware for the wifi card or software for the operating system that has (slightly) improved the signal. Software updates are usually a few hundred megs, take an hour or two (depending on internet speed), and you will likely need your power adapter.

I think you have 2 options to boost your wifi:

1) a USB wifi card that has an external antenna. This would add a second (bulky) wifi card to your laptop via USB and you'd plug an antenna like the ones Arsenic7 linked into it. It would be somewhat inconvenient and buying the right wifi card would take some effort, but this is probably the easiest solution. I'd imagine this costs $40-75, or up to $100 for a really nice one. I can help you find the right card in comments if you're interested.

2) A "wifi bridge". You know how you probably have a wifi access point/router with antennas sticking out of it somewhere? You might be able to turn it into a "bridge" which is exactly what it sounds like: it will bridge the connection between the park and your apartment with its antennas.

You would connect your bridge to the public wifi at whatever signal it could pull off, and then your computer would connect to the bridge at full signal.

Not all wireless access points/routers have bridging, some of them name it something else stupidly, some of them make it a hassle to setup, and some of them have worse antennas than your Macbook so the whole thing is futile.

I'd imagine you could go buy a wifi access point with bridging capability for $60-100 at Fry's or $40-60 online. I don't have a specific recommendation off the top of my head, but I sort of like TrendNET's wireless stuff.

There are, in fact, antennae you can purchase to boost your reception.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&N=-1&isNodeId=1&Description=wifi+antenna

Though I've never used them, so I have no idea of their efficacy.

Not to bombard you with too many questions, but...

Does it correlate with notifications? Do you leave your wifi on? Can you shut down the wifi and 4G and see what happens? Maybe even try airplane mode and see if it continues?

I use both Documents to Go and QuickOffice Pro on my Android phone. On my phone they are both pretty terrible for editing, but on a tablet you'd have more room.

The biggest headache isn't opening the files, it's seamlessly getting them back and forth. I use Google Docs, but I'm looking to move away from them because of Google's sponsorship of CPAC. QuickOffice and Documents to Go work great with Google Docs, but while QO works with loads of other file storage services (Dropbox, Box, Evernote, etc.) it's not the same kind of seamless experience with your desktop.

Microsoft's answer to docs in the cloud is Skydrive, and while there are apparently Skydrive apps for Android and iPhone, I haven't used them yet. I would expect Skydrive to work perfectly with Windows Phone and any tablets running similar, if there are any.

My biggest problem is actually the need to regularly open a large spreadsheet that's pushing 1 MB and has many, many rows and tabs. QuickOffice already crapped out on me with their latest "upgrade" which added all sorts of unwanted text-formatting options at the expense of being able to open the damn file; I get memory errors now.

Check out this link for apps for android tablets:
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/235744/the_best_office_alternatives_for_android_tablets.html

and this for ipad apps that handle office docs:
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/236371/office_suites_for_ipad_the_roundup.html

Those articles are about 6 months old so ... Microsoft is also working on bringing its own office apps to the iPad. That could be soon or never.

Like ozchick, I use an ipad and use the iWork tools (pages, numbers) to work with office documents. Be sure to put in the front end effort to hook your iWork apps up to Dropbox using the WebDav Protocol or else you'll go mad moving documents on and off of a tablet.

You can work on Word documents in Pages on the iPad. It is a bit cumbersome, and it does not handle large documents very well (slllllloooooowww), but it can be done.