iPhone to be exclusive to AT&T for 5 years

If there were anything that could have pulled me away from Sprint as a carrier, this is it. I've been relatively happy with Sprint up to now, especially since most of my sizable family uses Sprint and the company offers unlimited calls within the network for a flat $5 fee. But something tells me as my Treo 650 keeps aging -- especially as compared to the iPhone -- hardware lust will win out over network "loyalty." Not that Sprint's customer service, monthly fees, or cellular coverage are good enough to warrant anything resembling loyalty, but up to now they've been convenient enough, and they've had the cell phone models I wanted.

Not anymore.

Of course, the price is going to have to come down considerably (or my wages up considerably) before I can afford the iPhone. I usually budget about $100 a year for phone hardware -- that is, every two years when my contract runs out I upgrade to the latest Palm phone using the contract renewal discount. The final price of the phone usually ends up being about $200. The jump from $200 to $600 is prohibitive, to say the least. Not to mention that my wife won't let me get away with just one iPhone in the house. Not for very long.

At least in the meantime I can be happy with my new Macbook, especially now that I've upgraded to the full 2 GB of RAM. The video card has no RAM of its own, so it steals memory from the main system to run. Combine that with memory-hungry apps like Firefox and the new Core 2 Duo system felt only moderately faster than the iBook G4 I bought a couple of years ago. With the full complement of RAM, however, it positively screams. It's a completely different machine. If you're in the market for a new laptop and you're thinking Macbook (and really, now that Macs can run Windows, why wouldn't you at least consider it?), definitely max out the RAM. Just don't do it at the Apple store -- their RAM prices are notoriously ridiculous. Order some from Crucial or use DealRAM to find another good deal (just stay away from the generic stuff) and install it yourself. I promise it won't hurt.