The small town cafe is a great place, sort of like Cheers (without the beer), where everybody knows your name. The atmosphere is cozy, the food is homey and the gossip is fresh.

The downside is that you may go there and find our a friend has died in a motorcycle accident. RIP David.

The new iPhones, 3GS,  have arrived sans Steve Jobs and the bring with them underwhelming capabilities.  Video Capture, MMS, Cut and Paste, and voice dialing should have been there since 1.0, but they finally made it in 3.0.  Other stuff like a compass (who cares) and push notification (still not background applications) are welcome along with better battery life and a few othrer goodies.

But here is the really bad news.  If you are an existing AT&T customer, whether an iPhone user or using another phone, your new iPhone 3GS 16g will cost you $599 not the announced $199.  Don’t believe me?  Here’s your link to the appropriate Apple web site.  Just scroll down until you see this:

For non-qualified customers, including existing AT&T customers who want to upgrade from another phone or replace an iPhone 3G, the price with a new two-year agreement is $499 (8GB), $599 (16GB), or $699 (32GB).

How’s that working for you?  How’s that for hosing your loyal installed base?  Apple and AT&T were evil enough by themselves, but this is beyond the pale.

Do I still really like my iPhone and think its the best smart phone I’ve ever owned?  Yep.  Will I be upgrading to 3GS any time soon?  Nope.  Is it possible that in the interim I will find the Pre or Android appealing?  Could be.

When in doubt about forwarding an email, or story, or Facebook Test please review this flow chart.

Here is an interesting ad just released by Microsoft pushing the Zune subscription service over iTunes.

The ad is trying to sell Zune subscription service on the basis that paying $15 per month for the subscription is cheaper than filling up a 120GB iPod at a buck a song.  But that’s not the point that’s interesting.

Do you know people who have full, or nearly full, 120 or 90GB iPods?  Sure you do.  Do you think they paid $30,000 or $22,500 to fill them up?  Then where did the music come from?

Per the ad, music costs about $250 per Gig or that songs at a dollar a piece are about 4MB each.  So a 16GB iPhone  or iPhone nano costs $4,000 to fill.  Do you know anybody with a full iPod nano?  Do you think they spent $4,000 on the music? Do you know anybody who has spent $4,000 on digital music?

Lets take another case where an iPod owner might fill her iPod with music ripped from CD’s she owns.  If the average CD costs $12.99 and has 10 tracks and it takes (per the math above) 30,000 tracks to fill a 120GB iPod then it would take 3,000 CD’s at a total cost of $38,970 to fill the iPod.  Do you know anybody who owns 3,000 CD’s?

Just a thought.

Running Windows 7 Build 7067 x86 on a Dell Latitude D820 with an NVIDIA Quadro NVS 1200 video card.  If I let the system sleep or hibernate when connected to the docking station and then wake or resume not connected, GUI is not in Aero mode upon wake/resume.  This behavior is the same if I let the system sleep or hibernate when disconnected from the docking station and then wake/resume when connected.  Behavior is also consistent whether using the MS NVIDIA Driver that comes with Win 7 or the Dell Vista video driver.  Logging out and logging back in returns the GUI to Aero mode.