MinBat

I’d say it depends on whether you want strong non-US/Europe coverage, if you care for commentaries and the like, and a range of other factors. Some of my favorites—in addition to the aforementioned BBC News—are: The Guardian, Al Jazeera, and France 24. The latter two are especially good on Africa/Mid-East coverage, if that appeals to you.

Actually, a lot of sociologists, anthropologists, and others would argue that the hammer does shape the carpenter, etc.

That would be the IOn, which is basically the S but less distinctive looking.

I picked up a Sony player a few months ago for, I think, about $60 and it has Amazn and Hulu plus Netflix and a bunch of other stuff. It does not have wifi but if you spend another 30 or so I think the next model up has it.

On the “NXT” series of phones, the customization is pretty limited to a bunch of widgets and services, I think.

And while Sony is definitely making an ecosystem play, they are not trying to lock you into Sony hardware only. Their Music Unlimited services will soon have apps for iOS and I believe non-Sony devices can be PS certified, no? Of course, in both of these cases the experience might be somewhat gimped.

Sony probably is the most likely (least unlikely?) of the major OEMs to go down this route. Though I have to say that I recently picked up a Neo V unlocked and was pleasantly surprised with how relatively unobtrusive Timescape or whatever they call it is compared to Sense, TouchWiz, and MotoBlur.

I hope this happens, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. I would love to pick up a Nexus decice with a screen of 3.7 or 3.8. 4.7 or whatever the Galaxy Nexus is just feels way to big for me.

Ocean sounds more fitting for their Bada devices line. I suspect they will go with Omnia (never understood why they replaced it with focus on the US market).

I just wasted about 4 hours yesterday on Swordigo. It has a kind of retro RPG charm and is completely free.

I love WP7 (as well as iOS and android….and Symbian….I have an affection problem for OSs), but I would not recommend using an upgrade on the Arrive at this point. It is a really clunky phone and WP7 does not have good landscape support. Add to that the questionable upgrade path and the fact that “a newbie,” while appreciating the ease of use of the Os, might get frustrated by the lack of the latest cool app Ll his or her friends are talking about, and it is hard to recommend any WP7 device but the Lumias at this point.

I have never used Omnifocus, but wouldn’t Evernote, OneNote, or Springpad be alternatives to this? Personally, I like to separate my tasks from my notes but if you are looking for an all-in-one solution, all three of those are cross-platform (though OneNote does not have a Mac app).

They do. Personally, I don’t really see the point and I am not arguing for it, just that there was a rumor circulating a while ago.

I am in the same boat as you and have tried pretty much every service known to humankind. Right now, I would go with Any.do or any app that syncs with google task (which does not have recurring tasks per se, but most 3rd party apps add this feature).

While I like RTMs ubiquity and features, I find the webapp an absolute pain to use. The wunderlist apps seem pretty unstable in general (the iOS and WP7 apps crash constantly for me) and it does not have recurring tasks. Evernote does not have repeating tasks either.

To be honest, the absolute bask task management system to my mind is actually MS exchange, but there’s no way to get it for free,.

I suspect this might depend on a couple of things in the next few months, none of which I am terribly informed about (so this is just spitballing and take it as such).

1. The outcome of Google/Oracle – if Google has to pay some kind of fine or licensing fee to Oracle, will Google then pass on that cost to the OEMs? In that case, I can see some companies gain an interest in WP7 if one of the comparative advantages (for a manufacturer) of Android is diminished.

2. How Google will deal with Motorola – that is, will Motorola be “favored” in such a way that Android OEM’s will feel that they are not able to compete. Google has assured everyone that not to be the case, but who knows.

3. Reception of upcomong OS, including WP8 and Jelly Bean (though, for this thread’s purposes WP8 is more important, I think—if it sells like hotcakes, other manufacturers will want to be in the space).

4. Nokia’s tablet intentions. If they do end up making a Lumia tablet, will that suck the air out of the room, so to speak, for Samsung and others who might want to mayke a tablet play?

5. Sales of the One series and Samsung’s S3. If the One series fails to revive HTC, will they want to make more of a play in WP7? Or if S3 disappoints for Samsung? Granted, from what I have read the One series is not going to be a disappointment, and I am sure S3 won’t be as well by virtue of Samsung’s sheer reach.

6. The seriousness of ZTE. I know that ZTE is not competitive with Nokia at the mid to high-end, but isn’t it on the low-end? There was a story a few days ago (I forgot where) that basically said that ZTE will decrease their efforts in Android in favor of WP7. As far as I know, this is the only Andoroid OEM who has made a similar statement.

In sum, I think this depends largely on where the mobile space is in half a year, if there’s “room” for a non-Nokia manufacturer. I do not think Microsoft would willingly make Nokia the sole WP7 manufacturer, especially if other OEM’s want to make WP7 devices. The challenge for the non-Nokia’s will be to compete, since they cannot really compete on price, market reach, and hardware design.

Thanks again everyone – this is really helpful. I did some more research and have decided to wait until right before leave the country (early July) to see if something new comes up (e.g. thinner Pro) and if not go with the current Pro. As much as I love the idea of the Air, if this is the computer I will live with for 2-3 years I am wondering about its long-term performance.

Wasn’t there a rumor a few months ago that Microsoft was looking into purchasing Rdio?? If I recall correctly, the argument was somehow tied to the family relationship between Rdio and Skype. But this might be hogwash.

Thanks again to all of you – very helpful comments. @TheFleetingFox, NVivo is not terribly GPU intensive, unless you do a lot of video coding which I do not do, so form that point of view the Air should be ok. The “official” recommended specs are 2 GB RAM or more and 2.0 GhZ Pentium 4 or better, which might make it a bit tricky to run it under a virtual Windows.

The reason I didn’t mention Bootcamp is that I would like to have full access to my files while using NVivo, and not have to sync the files between the different OSs using dropbox or some such. I suppose this is a fairly minor point in actuality, though.

Thanks to all of you. It does sound like the Air (current generation) might be stretched to its limits with some of the software i use (or I will just suck it up and enjoy the air 90% of the time and curse the sluggishness when I run specialized software the remaining 10% of the time).

The resolution bit is a good point as well. My Vaio is comparable to the Macbook Pro in resolution, and it is really on the low end, which would be an argument in favor of the Air…

Ah, decisions, decisions. I will do some more research and let you know what I decide.

Thanks for your response. Unfortunately, I am on somewhat on a tight schedule (need to get the computer before the beginning of July). I will see if anyone else chimes in but will plan to wait a bit before getting either a Macbook pro or stay with a Windows system.

To each his own and all that it the OPs comment that 80% of Apple users are arrogant is probably way off. Maybe, maybe, that number holds true if you limit your assessment to the people who frequent tech boards and forum, but I seriously doubt the validity of this assessment for the entire population of Apple users (never mind the issue of how you would define arrogant).

I use Apple, Microsoft, and Google products and services consistently (probably about 30/50/20, respectively) and they all play along rather nicely.

Ugh. My kingdom for an edit button. Pre-coffee grammar fail.

I, too, has had a great experience with ICS on a lower-speced device. I recently got the Xperia Neo V, which has pretty humdrum internals, and upgraded it to ICS (not stock, the official Sony version) and it works like a charm. My previous android experience was with the D2G, which is a much more powerful device, which leads me to believe:

• Android can be lightweight and snappy.
• Motorola/Verizon did something very very wrong