As a 44-year-old nerd, I spent nearly 1/4 of my entire adult life working as a PHP programmer for large Internet registrar.  When things were slow or I was between projects, I also had the dubious honor of doubling as a third-level customer support guy who specialized in trying to resolve e-mail related issues.

Of all the millions of questions I ran across when dealing with the average mom or pop, one of the most common was “What in the heck is DNS?“.

DISCLAIMER OF THE WEEK: I’m not a DNS expert by any means, nor do I play one on TV, but in trying to help the thousands of customers who needed it over the years, I always found the following little analogy to be very helpful in getting the point across

In a sentence form…

“DNS is the wholly-automated Internet version of a telephone phone book.”

While summary statements like that are usually written at the end of an article, I thought it very important to get the idea of the phone book planted in your brain that from the get-go.

It’s the core little secret that high-paid techno-wizards want to complicate so that they can scare you into paying them more money.   Once you understand the analogy of DNS is like a phonebook for the Internet, the rest of this article will hopefully make a lot more sense.

By the way, DNS is just an easy way of saying “Domain Name Service“.

Ok, I’ll bite, how is DNS like a phone book?

Did you know that every time you connect to the Internet, the machine you are using — whether it’s an Apple, PC, iPad, netbook, notebook, or even Sony PS3 — is assigned a unique, one of a kind number to help identify it — and by extension, you?

That number, called an Internet Protocol address, or “IP number” for short. When you are on the internet, you are the only one on the entire planet with that number.

Just as a telephone number identifies your phone, that unique IP address identifies your computer to the world.

The only real differences are:

1. Unlike a telephone number, your computer’s IP Address might change each time you connect to the Internet,
2. Unlike a telephone number, you usually don’t even need to know what yours is.
3. You don’t have to give out your ip number to anyone for them to be able to find you on the web

Just for the record, an IP Address is made up of a series of up to 12 digits, spaced out between three decimal points.

It might look something like this;

192.168.000.001

IP numbers are also usuallly shortened to eliminate the extra zeroes, like 192.168.0.1, but hopefully you get the idea.

What the Domain Name System does — in essence — is match up a domain name (such as ebay.com) to the address of the physical machine which is hosting that web site.  On the Internet, there are literally tens of thousands of Domain Name Servers whose sole function it is to coordinate which machine has which domain names hosted on it.  I won’t get into the nitty gritty of how this is all done, because then we’d be into overtime and someone would have to buy me a donut.

Suffice to say that out of those tens of thousands of servers which are pretty irrelevant to this little confusing rant, there are only a handful of core DNS servers, called Root nameservers at the heart of the Internet.  This handful pretty much handles the entire Internet, which is really impressive if you consider how many computers, sites, people, and things to see that there are out there.

Getting back to the story…

In much the same way that you might call an operator, give her someone’s name and she give you that person’s telephone number in reply, the DNS system interacts with your computer to look up a site’s “number” without having to bother the nice lady.

It’s like this.  Let’s say you were wanting to do a little bit of shopping for your niece’s birthday and heard they had a sale on sweaters at Wal-Mart;

1. In your browser’s address window, you’d type in walmart.com
2. Your browser goes out to the root DNS servers on the internet and asks for (then receives) the IP address of the computer which serves (or easier said, “puts”) walmart.com out on the Internet.
3. Once your browser has that computer’s IP address, it opens up a direct connection to that address (like dialing the phone number) and says “hi, are you walmart.com?“
4. The server on the other end — if everything’s worked out the way it should — responds, “Why yes, don’t be silly, of course I’m walmart.com.  Here’s the page you’re looking for.”
5. walmart.com’s Web site is displayed on your screen.

If it’s so simple, what can possibly go wrong?

Hmm. That is an interesting question.  With tens of thousands of DNS servers out there, and redundant systems in place, you can never count out Murphy’s Law.

“Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong” - Murphy’s Law

95% of the time when you type in a site name and it won’t come up, it’s usually just that particular Web site’s server (or connection to the ‘net) is having trouble.

The other 5% could be anything from an idiot with a backhoe (a type of tractor that digs trenches) who cuts Internet cabling, to the server being too busy, to a mis-typed address on the keyboard.  When you consider the millions of Web sites out there which operate 99.999% of the time, you might begin to understand how miraculous it is that any of the Internet ever works at all.

I just wish the Postal Service was this reliable — Emmett Brown (aka “Doc”), “Back to the Future”

More nuts, then the elderly man exits, stage right..

In the proverbial nutshell, that’s both what DNS is, and how DNS really works.  The technical mumbo jumbo gets a little more tricky, but this isn’t an article for technoweenies.  It’s hopefully for the average mom and pop out there who get confused when their favorite site, or e-mail doesn’t work.

Below are several other articles written by people hopefully smarter than me if you’re really interested.

Otherwise, if you ARE said technoweenie and you see a mistake I’ve made in trying to explain this stuff, PLEASE let me know by comment below and I’ll make sure to include your comment to try and help the helpless.

Wayne Hunt
segwayne.com

BTW, This article was written over the course of a weekend, in it’s entirety, on my Apple iPad.
I used the Nuance “dictation” app to write most of it by translated voice, then the WordPress App (iPhone version)
to edit and post the article.  It wasn’t fun without a keyboard, but it was one of those things which
I felt NEEDED to be tried, at least once to prove a point.  Sorry for all the grammar and
other mistakes I’m sure.

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It was in point-of-fact, the SEVENTH time in 23 days that I’d met with them after work, and the 9th total technician walking through my apartment who seemingly didn’t have a single CLUE what a cable card was.  Most of them instantly wanting to blame my TiVo HD for all the problems since they knew even less about TiVos.

So Monday, with Charter’s second set of Larry, Curly, and Moe triplets in my apartment spouting stupid bullshit about TiVo being the problem, I found myself trying very hard not to be confrontational and kick them to the curb.  As a substitute, I found myself absent-mindedly flicking the mute button on my iPhone 3G…

That’s when things went wrong.

After two years of regular use, it seems the little plastic tab on the mute button snapped off and promptly disappeared.  This, leaving the button mechanism apparently able to “freewheel” between ring and mute, pretty much depending on whether it was face up, or face down.  Randomly if I was carrying it in my pocket as usual…

On Tuesday afternoon, I stopped by a local AT&T store which was listed on the Web as having iPhone support.  I was fully prepared to either buy a new one outright, to pay to get mine repaired, or as a last resort, to actually give in and be extorted by AT&T for another 2 years for an iPhone 4 (which, btw, costs as much to upgrade as AT&T’s flat-rate repair policy).

The young lady (for the purposes of trying to be nice) in the AT&T store pretty much acted as though she didn’t care if I dropped dead on the spot, save for the trouble she’d have in clearing my body from her show room floor.  In her words, “there’s nothing we can do to help, sorry.  You might try the Mac & More store down the street“.

No attempts to help.  To sell, or to even lure me into an upgrade at the expense of my soul for two more years.

Ok… Fine…

Tuesday night, I called Apple directly.  Again, with the intent to repair, replace, or upgrade, even at my cost, as long as I didn’t have to suffer through another 2 year extension with AT&T.

The great tech I talked to (John) for over an hour-and-a-half was very helpful, very knowledgeable, and tried everything he could to make things work.  We even got an AT&T rep (Susan) on the phone who said that even though AT&T couldn’t sell me ANY phone without a contract extension, they verbally agreed that AT&T had NO OBJECTIONS to Apple selling me a re-manufactured phone outright as a replacement without a contract extension.

So… John and I start getting it written up.  New replacement phone, $199. Same as the flat-rate repair cost.  Cool.  Well, as cool as it can be for $199 to replace a $5.00 part.  On the bright side, I would have been moving from 3G/16 to 3GS/16, which at least would have gotten me iOS4 multitasking…

Enter the approval phase…

Suddenly, John reports that his supervisor tells him that “Apple can’t sell you a refurbished phone because of our contract with AT&T“..

In the end of the call, as an AT&T customer, AT&T won’t help me, Apple reportedly “can’t” help me because of  AT&T, even with Susan’s direct approval to do so…

No biggie I guess.

I’m certainly not particularly cross at anyone at this point.  They (John and Susan) are doing their jobs, and no one can be hated for that but the effect is that I still hate AT&T, still have their service that I’m paying for, and can’t find anyone to fix my iPhone without being sans-phone for a few weeks during the repair phase.

If I’m going to spend $50 to $100 to get the iPhone 3G repaired anyway, that leads me to start considering a move to Verizon and the Android phones, even though I’m not a fan…

The turning point.

Tuesday night before bed, Apple sends me (via e-mail) the obligatory online survey regarding the call, during which I have one final vent, spelling all of this out.

My appreciation for John’s attempt to help.  My dismay that they couldn’t help, and my consideration — even though I’m an Apple fanboy — of the comparatively and seemingly disgusting Android alternatives.

I — like almost everyone else who’s ever filled out an online survey — figured that no one would EVER see it, and that it was just a way for me to express my final opinion to the gods of the Internet before seeing it disappear into the vapors of the digital wasteland.

Enter “Joe” the savior.

Yesterday (Friday) about 1pm CST, I get a call from “Joe” at Apple in Texas (512 area code anyway).

After receiving my feedback on that survey (shock!), he wanted to discuss the situation and see if there was anything that might have gone wrong, what Apple could do to fix it, and to recap the situation.

Long story short, Joe and Apple come to the rescue.  “We sincerely want to apologize for any confusion, and you should have a replacement phone on your desk Monday morning“…

THAT is the way you do customer support people.

Apple had ZERO responsibility here.  Zero obligation here to replace a two-year-old iPhone that’s been used like pretty much any device of its kind.

All I hoped for when I called them was that they might help me repair my existing phone, or to help replace it.  Even at my expense.  After all, I’m the idiot who broke it.

That replacement phone really doesn’t cost Apple anything when you get down to it.  After all, it’s a returned phone which has gone through a re-manufacturing process to make it factory new (as opposed to “refurbished” which simply means they put the returned phone in a new box and ship it out).

The fact that Apple went out of their way to help a devoted customer who — now — will remain so indefinitely is PRICELESS, and very much a missing “way things should be done” in today’s world.

In the end, I’m one happy customer, and will stay so.

Wayne Hunt

I officially became a resident of Prattville, Alabama this weekend, thanks to Gobsmack-level help from friends and dad in moving a trailer load of heavy furniture, followed by the second day of transporting pissed off felines 200 miles south to the new apartment. Katie thinks she’s in charge. roux is terrified, and mouse couldn’t care less. status quo, but a different world for them. … And for me as well I suppose..

At 44, aren’t I too old to live in an apartment…?

In my younger days, I used to read voraciously. Every moment I got to myself was covered in words from series like Dragonlance, the Elric series of books, various works by Louise Cooper, and yes, pictures by way of the more than occasional comic books.

I’ve tried purchasing a few books such as the TorchWood novels and various Star Trek sets in the past little bit. I’ve even dusted off my copy of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but in general have found that I lack either the time, or patience to keep up with carrying around a novel to read. No problem carrying around the correspondingly huge iPad, but a 6″. 2 ounce book is just unforgivable but I digress.

15 years, one diivorce, six Web sites, and several cities later, I find that I don’t often get such a luxury as a leisurely novel read any more. Today however is when that is going to start changing for the better.

More specifically, I am a huge Nathan Fillion fan so LOVE ABC’s series “Castle”. Today I found the novel Richard Castle: Heat Wave in the store, which is a corresponding novel to parallel the book that Nathan’s character (Richard Castle) was writing during the show’s first season.

I downloaded the “example” preview into iBooks and really liked the first 25 pages. Primarily because I identify with the characters from the show. I suppose this is how Cathy Reichs fans feel when reading a Bones novel then watching the TV show.

Anyway, I’m going to buy it, and give it a shot in the hopes that it will rekindle (no Kindle pun intended) my love of the written word. I’ll let you know how it goes.

(This post incidentally written on my iPad…)

I’m speaking of course of those annoying neighbors (aka hobgoblins) living upstairs who obviously feel the need to re-arrange furniture all night — judging by the loud bumps and bangs coming through your bedroom ceiling while you so desperately need to get to sleep.

Go ahead.  Admit it. You know you want to. Even the most gun-control-centric human being would humorously have thoughts of stretching out on the bed, faithful 9mm pistol in hand, striving to see just how many shots it would take to kill the rhinoceros roaming above your head at 3am.

Luckily for civilized society, the noise factor of a pistol and the difficulty in securing a good-quality silencer — like everyone in the movies seems to have on hand — keeps most of you wimpy bastards at bay.

For those lucky ones who do have a silencer or just don’t give a damn about the noise, I could only suggest that you make a few pre-emptive purchases for the fateful night;

• sandpaper to smooth out the area around the hole(s)
• some spackle (aka sheetrock mud) to cover the hole
• putty knives to apply it with
• some *WHITE* toothpaste as a temporary fix in case the cops come running in (if you have a “popcorn ceiling” from the 70′s)
• paint to match
• brushes which can be quickly disposed of.
• a disposable drop cloth
• a disposable dust buster vacuum

(You might also consider a replacement light fixture in case your fury knows no bounds)

Now, to get down to it…

1. Once the sound has abated from the upstairs smegheads, quickly spread out the dropcloth over the affected area. Sand around the bullet holes, hoping no blood is seeping through. If there’s blood, just stuff a small Wal-Mart bag through the hole to catch it.
2. Once the area is sanded and smooth, start filling the hole with spackle using the putty knife.
3. Let the spackle dry for a few minutes (it will shrink), finish out until even with the surrounding area.
4. Let dry for 30 minutes, then sand.
5. Apply toothpaste in “dollops” using the tube itself and light pressure. Remember, it’s not supposed to be perfect, just enough to blend in and cover when the cops come rushing in.
6. After the toothpaste dries, you can paint to match if needed.
7. Throw everything away in a dumpster on the other side of town, wiping off fingerprints of course.

By this point, if you’ve done your frickin job well, you’ll have a restored ceiling able to pass cursory inspection by the cops, and a better night’s sleep once they’re gone.

Good luck and happy hunting…

For 15 years, I built, created, then ran a site for the now antiquated Commodore Amiga computer community by the name of Amiga.org..  Since 1995, it really was a focal point in my pathetic little world until I recently sold it to another community member.

Over those 15 years, I built and redesigned the site probably a dozen times, always keeping in mind that development of new browsers hasn’t really moved forward in at least 10 years.  They’re still dealing with HTML 3.0 AT BEST.  Meanwhile, the world around them has moved on to XHTML, CSS, RSS, XML, and about a hundred other technologies that the PC and Mac communities have long ago taken for granted.

Last year, we needed to move the site forward to vBulletin 3.8x, which afforded the community lots of new and nifty features, but at one big cost, and that was the need to embrace Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).  CSS has been around ALMOST as long as Amiga.org, but as I said, 99% of the Amiga browsers out there were never updated to support it.  The 1% that does support CSS, doesn’t run on 99% of the remaining so-called “Classic” Amiga computers.

For the first time in 15 years, even *I* had to step outside my comfort zone to start learning CSS (again) and how to write a site that wasn’t based on HTML 3.2…

All I can say is that in 1995 when I wrote the initial site with a text editor on Windows 95, life for Web developers was a LOT simpler.

Now, I’m trying to both learn how to write a custom theme for WordPress, as well as to adapt it to the Thesis theme framework which almost exclusively uses CSS, Javascript, and a whole host of “newfangled” crap that I’ve long-since forgotten.  Never before have I felt like such an idiot as I do now, when I’m trying to go back and re-learn everything again from scratch.

I’d say “it’s worse than SharePoint” but pfft.  Who would I be kidding?

All of this, btw, with very restricted network access and working from my macbook the rest of the time..

Fun…  If anyone has any pointers, or wants to contribute free “idiots guides to doing stupid web shit that my 12 year old niece can do in her sleep” type books, please let me know..

These same people are usually the same ones who bite off hard on the $7/cup Starbucks “culture”, so I guess it’s just a matter of perspective.

As a fan of Apple products, some of the arguments I deal with are (in no particular order)

• The uninformed “Macs cost twice as much as PC’s“, aka the “mac penalty” argument (pricing),
• The “I don’t know anything about the mac, but we use Office at work and I need Windows” (aka. “compatibility is an issue”) argument,
• The “why would I buy a Mac when I can buy a $2 Gateway/Dell box” argument (a subtly different argument than the “mac penalty” argument) and finally
• The somewhat lazy “I already know Windows and I’m too old to care about changing” argument.

Each of these arguments against the Mac have valid points depending on each individual and their own independent needs, but each argument is usually easily defeated *if* you can actually get the person to actually sit down and play with OS X for 10 minutes.

• (Mac Penalty Argument) Compare a MacBook Pro to a Dell Adamo or Sony top end comparable and the MacBook is in the same ball park, plus you can do more with the Mac right out of the box..
• (compatibility argument) Mac OS X has “Office for the Mac” and 99% of PC users will never miss any “compatibility” with the PC.
• (The “$2 Gateway” argument) True, you can also buy a Ford Ranger pickup without Air Conditioning, but wouldn’t you rather have the Lexus?
• (The “I’m used to Windows” argument) Change is hard, but some change is worth its weight in gold.
  • (did you ever notice how you almost NEVER hear anyone say they actually LIKE Windows?)

Which brings me to my point…

Friday, I bought my new MacBook Pro into work.  More because I didn’t want to leave it in the car on a freezing day, but still.  As a co-worker came by, we sat and discussed the Mac and  I explained to him my reasons for becoming a Mac user in the first place, when he said something to me that I really couldn’t disagree with at all.

“I just don’t like Macs because of the Elitist attitude that Mac users all seem to have.  It’s like a cult or a virus or something.”

Wow…  “Bazinga!“  Straight to the heart of the matter.

I guess I’d never really thought about it before, being an enthusiastic convert from the PC, but feeling the way I do about Apple products, I can really see that I *do* tend to have somewhat of an elitist (mine is better than yours) attitude about the Mac.  Hmmm.. Come to think of it, so does almost every single Mac user I know…

I know the good Lord said “pride cometh before a fall” and all that.  I believe that’s true to some extent, because pride makes you blind to your surroundings.

That being said however, I can really understand why Mac users (as a whole, but not trying to generalize) tend to feel that their chosen platform is better than any other. (It is, but I digress)…  When my co-worker offered that opinion, I really thought about it and it dawned on me that I haven’t been this enthusiastic about ANY computer since the old Commodore Amiga platform in the 80′s.

• I picked up the Mac at a true low-point in my computing life when I had truly reached a breaking point with Microsoft products.
• Since my first iMac 4 years ago, Mac OS X really helps me — as a person — concentrate more on what I want to do than having to constantly worry about “how can I get Windows to do it?”
• In the first four years of owning my iMac, I never needed to upgrade it.  I never had the constant hardware/software issues of Windows, and — unlike Windows, I didn’t have to literally reload the system from scratch every 6 months due to something breaking.  Matter of fact, I *never* needed to rebuild the iMac in all the time I owned it.
• My iPhone has been singularly the most incredibly useful device I’ve ever owned
• My new MacBook Pro, similarly, allows me to “take my world with me” (since I literally cloned my iMac onto it)…

It’s easy to fall into the trap of pride in something when your experience is so “night and day” compared to the constant frustration, updates, and rebuilds of a Windows system, but I wonder whether this mass pride that we (Mac users) all feel isn’t — to some small extent — doing the platform a disservice?

After all, even though you “can lead a stubborn mule (Windows user) to a crystal clear stream, you can’t force him to drink the kool-aid“..  Ok, I’m paraphrasing, but you get the point.. right?

I wonder if the announcement for the iPad has had any effect on the sales of the MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops as a whole?

Whyzzat you ask??

Well Lucy, lemme ‘splain..

There’s a group of people out there who were waiting on the new iPad.  We had all heard the rumors of “MacOS X on a tablet” and if a lot of people — like me — decided to wait it out to buy one, then we get into the world where MacBook Pro sales are negatively impacted.

However, that was last month.

I’m sure that some of those same people have now decided they can’t wait (or hate that the iPad doesn’t run a full OS) and have run out and purchased MacBooks.  If that’s the case, the MacBook sales should be positively impacted by the delay between announcement and release of the iPad.

Since the Macbook / MacBook Pro are Apple’s number one sellers on the computer side of the house, I really find myself curious as to how all of this is playing out.  Are there more Mac users waiting in earnest for the iPad, or have more of us turned to going ahead with a MacBook to meet our needs?

One thing’s for sure.  Apple sure are sneaky bastages when it comes to marketing, so anything’s possible.

If you have any ideas about my boggle above, leave me a comment and let’s discuss it.  I would really like to hear people’s opinions.

Wayne Hunt
segwayne.com

Ever since the dawn of the XM and Sirius radio business models, I’ve always asked myself, “why on Earth would anyone want to pay for radio?“.  After all, I had a six-mile commute to work, and you couldn’t take it inside with you and get a signal, so you’re essentially paying X amount per month to listen to the radio about 20 minutes a day.  I mean, what’s the deal?  I’ve already got a FREE radio, not to mention 16 Gigabytes of MP3′s on a USB stick connected to it.  If that gets old, I can even fire up Bluetooth on my iPhone and stream music straight from it so… What’s the big deal… right?

For a 10 minute commute every day, the logic above is fairly flawless.  Lately however, my weekly commute changed to about 3.5 hours each way, twice a week.  During which, I’m constantly searching for local radio stations on the way to and fro.  I’ve heard every song that I own on my USB stick until I’m pretty much ready to throw it away, and I’m bored to death about mile 47 of my 170 mile sojourn.

Enter the XM Skydock..

The XM Skydock is — in essence — an XM receiver that doubles as both an iPhone dock and charger.  As you can see by this picture, it plugs into the cigarette lighter, then the iPhone (or iPod touch) docks at the top of a semi-rigid stalk, allowing the interface software application to be in easy reach while driving.

In the Box..

When you first open the box, what you see is the receiver stalk.  There are also a couple of spacers for differing levels of iPod/iPhone cases, a manual, a quick start sheet, a channel guide for XM radio, an “AUX” cable to provide direct audio to capable players, and the magnetic antenna which is the most difficult part of the “easy” installation.

Installation…

The box describes the installation of this system as “simple and easy”.  For the most part, I agree, with one caveat.

1. plug in the stalk into a cigarette lighter
2. download the iphone/ipod app
3. Activate your service with XM radio
4. type in the UID/password into the app
5. set your radio to the correct channel (or plug in the provided AUX cable)
6. .. and finally, learn all about the magic of how to route the wiring of an externally mounted antenna — which looks like a baby “wall wart” charger — through your door’s weather stripping (without destroying it) then through the dash to hide the wires..

For step 6, most people of average intelligence will probably want to go ahead and hire out your local audio installer geek for help.  Better $20 to him than $200 to replace the weather strip and a mangled antenna.

Special consideration: When I first plugged up the system, I thought it would be a simple task to simply toss the antenna up on the dashboard and drive.  After all, the dash has an unobstructed view of the sky.. Right?  Apparently not..

Seems that — unlike FM radio — satellite radio is very, very “line of sight” between the antenna and the satellite itself.  If, for example, you find yourself driving East and the satellite is “behind you”, the antenna is easily blocked by the roof of your vehicle and you get music that fades in and out randomly as the signal is lost.  Better to go ahead and mount it outside to get a clear view and just be done with it.

The Software…

Downloading the Sirius/XM Skydock application is pretty straight forward, like any other free app store app,  Just make sure you get the Skydock app and not the streaming app, which won’t work with the skydock.  I may provide pictures later, but there are plenty on google.

The interface for the software is seemingly very intuitive although sometimes a bit hard to read at arm’s length.  You can change channels, search, get weather reports, and even “tag” music you hear for later downloads in iTunes (for those of you who do such things).  I have no real complaints about the interface, and it would have been far better than trying to use the built-in interface of my Pioneer DEH-6100BT deck at 70 miles per hour.

In the End

The Good

• The sound quality is amazing when connected through the AUX cable (as opposed to using the built-in FM tuner)
• The variety of music and programs seems pretty good
• It’s a fairly simple system to install, only the antenna may trip you up.
• You can actually listen to the same program while driving for more than 20 minutes (when normal FM stations start to fade quickly)
• You can keep up to 12 favorite channels, making it relatively easy to find something to listen to.
• The software can even prompt you when your favorite programs or tagged artists start playing.

The Bad

• Installing the antenna is not for the meek.
• If you have an older car, like I do, the weight of the iPhone sometimes causes the entire interface to “rotate” (or better to say “fall”) out of position when you hit bumps in the road.
• Bumps in the road shake the iPhone, making it sometimes appear unreadable — depending on how much your highway department sucks that is..
• For someone with big hands, it’s easy to hit the wrong button sometimes, especially if you’re not concentrating on reaching for the screen.
• Some iPhone cases, such as my Speck ruggedized will “fit” but it’s very, very tight — even with the dock arms fully opened.  I don’t however want to trade out the life-saving thick rubber case protection for anything that might not survive my unerring tendency to drop the phone on concrete.
• Sometimes if you don’t dock it “just right”, the screen lock will engage and turn off the screen (which I don’t want).  That however may be case related.

The Ugly

• “Commercial free” is total and utter bullspit.  Music channels aren’t bad, but any of the talk, news, or other channels spend seemingly 40% of the time with the same “buy gold”, “get out of credit card debt” crap that you get on standard radio.  6 minutes of Glenn Beck.  4 minutes of listening to some maxi-zoom-dweebie tell me how to make my penis larger.

The commercials themselves are ALMOST enough to make me want to cancel XM radio.  On the bright side, there’s always a music channel you can swap to during the incessant and neverending commercials.  I would almost be willing to pay another $5.00 a month just to get rid of them.  Almost.

Overall, I’m not sure how I feel about it, but most of my negative emotions are about the overzealous commercials playing every 5 minutes.  Otherwise, I was able to drive that 3.5 hours this weekend and never listen to the same thing twice.

Love “Blue Collar Comedy” radio.  Love the “classics” channel where they replay 30′s and 40′s radio shows.  Love the “80′s on 8″ channel and for the first time, I am able to listen to the entire Glenn Beck show from start to finish.  Whether that’s a good or bad thing, dunno yet. Your mileage may vary.

Hope this review helped.  If you have questions, please feel free to drop us a line below and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Wayne

For example, while I can fire up iMovie or Garageband, there simply isn’t enough power behind the Atom processor to actually DO anything beyond what a netbook’s good for.  No podcasting, no Photoshop, no WarCraft, no Call of Duty 4.

So.. That being said, and the histrionic issues caused by the sincerely apathetic speed of the Best Buy trade-in program behind me, I set out today with my $469 gift card, along with $30 in Best Buy member gift cards in hand, with the intent to purchase a new base-model MacBook Pro, 13″ laptop.  Let me just state, out-front that most of you simply cannot imagine the amount of thought that went into the decision.

Should I buy a base laptop?  Should I buy the bigger badder 15″ laptop?  Should I just buy a Mac Mini and a 20″ monitor and make plans to sell it back later?  Should I just tough it out and not get anything at all? (in which case, what would I have done with $500 in gift certificates???)  ARGGhhh.

It was actually the local Best Buy in Huntsville that talked me out of anything but the base setup.

Having decided at least on a laptop — to keep from having to haul a monitor around — I couldn’t decide on either a 13″ or base 15″ model.  Being most unhelpful and disinterested in helping a customer, after much frustration, I discovered the local store DIDN’T EVEN STOCK the model I wanted.

This of course called for the obligatory 200 mile road trip to the nearest Mac-selling Best Buy, which happened to be in Murphreesboro, TN.  It was a beautiful day, I had a moral imperative and I was “on a mission from God” (which for the cretins out there is a big tip of the hat to the Blues Brothers).

To cut a long and presumably boring story short, the people in the alien Best Buy in Murphreesboro were the exact opposite of my local shop.  They were helpful, attentive, and even had an honest-to-god Apple rep on hand to answer questions…

Now I just need to sell the Dell Hackintosh and the new baby will be a fairly inexpensive upgrade.

Here is the unboxing of what I ended up with;

The Box..

The box top

The box, open but unmolested

Cables and all the goodies

The software

The EULA sticker

The laptop with the protective "shipping popcorn" still covering the keyboard.

Houston... We have liftoff! (and a very happy Wayne)