@benjgvps: First time I tried dialing my home phone (where I'd lived for 15 years) from a rotary phone (yes, I'm old), I had to draw the damned keypad out on a napkin and work out my phone number by dialing over and over, writing the digits down as I hit them.

@Yanguang: I believe "cup of water" and "fires in electrical equipment" are contraindicated. You, my dear, got lucky.

@m4nm4n: And, apparently, there is no spoon!

@Stephen.Lecheler: OR, you notice that a lot of the negative reviews have nothing to do with the product; someone didn' get it shipped in time, etc, and gave it 1 star. If you're not reviewing the SELLER but the PRODUCT, these reviews can tweak ratings.

@iamjames: Right: to effectively take out the chain, you need to've blasted hte main lock and then somehow wedged-open the door so the chain is tight as you prepare for the kick.

@playdoh: My favorite is, "it wasn't doing this until you worked on it..."

@Apeiron242: Charles Schwab requires 6-8 characters, letters/numbers only.

You're still stuck mousing all over the place. This is where Quicksilver/Launchy/et al shine: hit a key or two and bam — instant app.

I would add, STAND UP when recording your outgoing message because it adds bass to your voice, enhancing the professionalism of your message.

@jeremy_mccurdy: Hell, I'd WAY rather have fried chicken than Windows 7..

@Apeiron242: Clearly, it's a continuation of #3, a parenthetical offering further suggestions; poorly constructed, yeah, but certainly not worthy of a scorning comment. There are WAY worse grammatical errors all around us; forgive those that offer the written word a sense of the spoken.

@yokocar: Right; I was reading with interest an article in Linux Format about "Gnome Shell" and realized with a start they were describing, essentially, Expose'. I thought, "well, damn, that's not so revolutionary...!"

@hewhois: Yesh, it's an intriguing blend of Windows and Mac.

I was told the customer service rep would hang up on me if I began recording the call — and then they hung up.

@InklingBooks: True, but given the prevalence of wifi (and the impending arrival of WiMax?), it won't be long before signal-through-cable is a thing of the past.

While I prefer the XFCE interface, in a straight-up comparison of Ubuntu v Mint, Mint's visually far more appealing. I liked that all the settings are available from one panel (XFCE does the same), which makes configuring new systems infinitely easier than Ubuntu's whacked "pick one... go back and find another... and…

@Ssscorpion: How Freaking Huge is your damned drive??!

@wrecklass: OSX does the same, running daily, weekly and monthly scripts (cron jobs, donchaknow?). There's a nice desktop widget ([www.giantmike.com]) to keep track, make sure they've run and force them to run (if you feel the system's a bit logy, say). Onyx, Cocktail and the like also let you run these scripts,…

@gpzbc: or at least buy one with a shift key

@Nano-Byte: You say this like it's a bad thing. What is your understanding of "capitalism" and "business growth" and "maximizing shareholder value"?