A New Take on Bloatware

Bloatware is a term for sortware that start off small, fairly well written and intuitive. Then, after each release, more and more features are haphazardly added until you're left with a package that is slow, unstable, and unpleasant to use.

Windows was considered a perfect example of bloatware. By the time Microsoft was working on Windows Vista, their operating system had become a mess. It was buggy and full of security holes. Windows Vista was suppose to fix many of these problems (and it did fix some of them), but in the end, it became so bloated that people literally stopped buying it. Even today, most corporations (the bread-and-butter for Microsoft) still limp along with Windows XP -- an operating system that was released about the same time the first version of Mac OS X made its debut.

Windows Vista became so bad, that it became the butt of many jokes and ruined Microsoft's reputation. Microsoft immediately set to work on Windows 7, removing bloat, cleaning up the interface, making the program so much faster.

Microsoft is also working hard on its reputation of being a stodgy, nerdish, and very uncool company. As part of this effort, they've done some pretty rad things to help promote Windows 7. However, one of thee efforts was a dual promotion with Burger King of Japan with the new Windows 7 burger. This is not a photoshopped picture. This is an actual picture of a Windows 7 burger taken ...I mean stolen... uh borrowed from Burger King Japan's website. I don't know if this is a way to market something from a company that is the very definition of bloatware.

Bon Appetite!

You're Not Getting Rid of us That Easily!

I am currently on hold with CableVision's disconnect department. I've been on hold for 17 minutes and counting. They have a special department you call if you are dropping your service and not moving. I expect them to give me a bit of a fight.

T-Mobile has transfered our phone number to their service, so we can now safely drop our cable service. Our antenna from Denny's came, but we haven't gotten the pre-amp. I just called them, and they forgot to put it in the box, they're sending it out today. I can't get too mad at them, they're basically a husband and wife team, and they were quite apologetic about the whole thing.

We also got some bad news about Boxee...

Wait this just in: I got through to the disconnect department, and they gave me absolutely no trouble. They simply put in the disconnect, and told me that I would still have the Internet service for $50 per month. They didn't even delve into my reasons for dropping their service or whether I have switched to a competitor. This was certainly a pleasant surprise. I expected them to off a discount of something to keep my service. Nothing. Not even a toaster. I guess the long wait time is simply the number of people who are dropping their cable service. Certainly not the experience people had when attempting to drop AOL.

So, as of today, we have no cable TV service, and we're saving $110 per month.

Back to Boxee. Remember that was one of the reasons we decided to try our bold experiment. Boxee gave us a front end to make it easy to watch TV. Through it, we've watched, 30 Rock, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, the original Star Trek, Hawaii Five'O, Have Gun will Travel, Lost in Space, and a rather strange series of shows that includes babes in bikinis driving hot cars. Okay, I didn't watch that last one, but I certainly found the concept fascinating.

Anyway, Boxee is dropping Hulu from its service. This is a major disappointment because all the shows I mentioned were on Hulu. Well, the hot babes driving hot cars one isn't on Hulu, but all of the other shows we've watched were.

This is a big disappointment. Fortunately, it really doesn't affect us too much. Our downstairs TV is really a computer monitor, and our DVR, TV tuner, and Boxee Box is a real live computer. That means we can still watch Hulu on our set. Instead of going through Boxee, we'll just have to go directly to the Hulu website. That's a bit of a pain because Boxee had a nicer interface than Hulu's website.

However, I now wonder what other channels Boxee gets will be dropped. Boxee does pick up Comedy Central and CBS, but I wonder for how much longer this will continue.

How to Pick Up TV Reception in 20 Easy Steps.

Our old antenna is kaput. It's simply too old to get a clear signal. So, my son and I went on a merry chase to find a new antenna. We went to Antenna Web to help us pick out the type of Antenna you need.

Antenna Web is sponsored by the Consumer Electronics Association, and helps you figure out the size of the antenna you need, where to aim it, and the types of issues you may have with it. It then uses a color guide to help you pick out the antenna. Unfortunately, few sites actually list whether or not their antennas are certified by the CEA as to a specific range.

Most of he TV/Appliance stores don't sell antennas any more. I guess too many people use cable now. We went to Best Buy and a few other stores, but all they had were Digital Indoor Antennas. A few words here: There is no such thing as a digital antenna. Antennas pick up electromagnetic waves in either the UHF or VHF range. This is true for analog or digital signals. The difference is the way those signals are interpreted. It's somewhat like the difference between AM and FM. You use the same antenna on your car to pick up the signal, but once you receive the signal, they are interpreted in different ways.

So, what we really saw was a bunch of attractively packaged rabbit ears in flat high tech looking boxes. Each one specifically labeled it was for digital TV. In fact, one box even explained that you can't use your old antenna for digital TV.

So off to the Internet to find a new antenna. Again, most sites claimed they sold digital antennas and charged a premium. I wouldn't have minded that so much, but none of the sites gave you an idea of the type of antenna you were getting. We found only two that used the Antenna Web rating system.

One site that attracted my attention is Denny's TV Antenna Sales. The site outright admitted that there is no such thing as a digital antenna. Wow, that's refreshing! Denny also suggested you go to the Antenna Web site, find out the antenna you needed, and then Denny's selects the antenna you need based upon Antenna Web's recommendation. For example, according to Antenna Web, we needed a medium directional antenna. Denny's site also determined that since all of the stations we wanted to receive were within 80 degrees of each other, we could easily use a narrow directional antenna.

Denny's site also took a look at our setup: How much cable is there between the antenna and the TV? Will we be using a splitter? If so, how many splits will there be? Do we need pre-amp or post amps to help boost our signal. Even better, Denny's offers a 90 day return policy.

Another good site is HD TV Antenna Labs. Unlike Antenna Web (which they link to), they actually recommend specific antennas based upon your needs. They also have an excellent article about selecting an antenna. They also have a price comparison service and a user comment and ratings section. However, what we discovered is that few of the antennas actually have price comparisons. Most show no vendors at all, and those that do only list Summit Source as the only vendor.

By the way, Summit Source is also another antenna sales site that uses the Antenna Web rating system to help you select your antenna, but they don't help you beyond that. Plus, Summit Source doesn't offer a return policy. However, their selection is much greater than Denny's and their prices also appear to be lower.

Happy Birthday

Today is my birthday. It was a beautiful day -- about 55 degrees and I got to celebrate it by climbing on my roof. I have one of those semi-bungalow style really steep roofs that normal men my age wouldn't dream of climbing. But, I had a job to do.

On our roof is an antenna I had put up about 13 years ago. This was before we had cable the first time, before we switched to DishNetwork, and before we switched back to cable. I had cut the wire to the arial the last time because CableVision used the wire to connect our cable to our upstairs TV. Because the antenna was still connected, we ended up with mixed signals. (In my previous post, I reported it was DishNetwork that did this, but my son corrected me. DishNetwork wired our house correctly. CableVision reused the antenna lead without first disconnecting the antenna).

Anyway, I connected the lead, but alas, the TV tuner card isn't working. Daniel, my son who got me in this mess, is in Connecticut at the model U.N. He's trying to defend the U.S. position on private militias and space weapons. (HINT: The U.S. is the only country for these two items. He's going to have fun). I have decided to wait for him to return instead of trying to configure the card. He already did it once and would probably get mad at me if I tried. Doesn't matter I am a highly technical person. I am still a dad, and dads just screw things up. Ask your kids.

Also CableVision via their OptimumVoice department is causing all sorts of problems with our phones. They installed a new cable model (a Motorola SBV5222) and the phone line keeps dropping. We have no way of knowing until we pick up the phone, or we meet someone who asks, "Hey, what's wrong with your phone?". 

Some good news. The T-Mobile Hotspot@Home modem arrived. It's also a wireless router and it is much better than the Belkin wireless router we were using. It provides a strong clear signal throughout our house, and unlike the Belkin, it doesn't freeze up when we are pushing a lot of data through it.

Right now, T-Mobile provided us with a temporary number until they are able to get our home phone number transfered to our T-Mobile@Home phone. Since our old number isn't working due to the modem, I've rewired our phones to use the T-Mobile@Home instead of OptimumOnline.  At first, I changed our OptimumOnline phone mail message to tell people to dial the new T-Mobile number, but then I remembered that OptimumOnline has a forwarding feature which I was able to set via the webpage. Now, when you dial our OptimumOnline phone number, our T-Mobile@Home phone number rings.  As soon as the phone number transfer is complete, we're saying goodbye to OptimumOnline.

And, because our new T-Mobile@Home wireless router doesn't freeze,  we are actually able to use Boxee to watch Internet streams to our TV, and it is great. For the first time, I am watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I didn't see it the first time around, but they have all three seasons available via Hulu. Also available in Hulu are the five seasons of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and the Alfred Hitchcock Hour. I also showed my kids a few episodes of Hawaii Five-O which they thought was great in a very camp sort of way. We played Spot the Hippie. One of the trademarks of Hawaii Five-O was the hippie scene embedded somewhere in the episode.

We did have one disappointment, Astroboy isn't the 1964 original, but some 1990 remake. That's no fun at all. I haven't checked to see if they have Speed Racer.

So, even though we don't have reception right now, we are having a blast with the Internet streams -- especially from Hulu.

Fun for the Whole Family

Last night, we couldn't get more than channels 2 to 13 even when we try to set the tuner card in cable mode. Maybe we need to set it to analog mode too? Blah.

My son connected the cable to the cable DVR box and the cable from that to the TV Tuner card in the PC. This allows us the ability to set the TV tuner to channel 3, and use the cable box to change channels.

We then notice that there's a 3 to 4 second delay between what gets displayed on TV, and the sound played directly from the cable DVR box. Of course! The TV tuner card takes some time to capture the image and send it to the monitor. We think everything might get cleaned up once we connect the cable to the antenna we have on the roof.

Another fun fact we discovered. We originally had an antenna, then we got DishNetwork. When we did that DishNetwork used the cable from the antenna for the Dish. This created a bit of a problem since the TV upstairs (we hadn't mentioned that one yet. Did we?) was now getting input from the satellite dish and the antenna. My solution was to go on the roof and cut the cable. After all, we didn't need the antenna any more.

Now, I'll have to go back to the roof and reattach a coaxle cable to the antenna. Fun. Even worse, we now realize we simply can't unplug the cable and plug in our antenna because we still need the cable for Internet. Fortunately, Optimum recently rewired our cable to provide a direct connection between the cable modem and the cable. Before, we were connected to the cable modem with three coaxle cable splitters. Now, it's just one. We can reroute the antenna wire through the basement, to the splitter, and simply remove the wiring for the TVs from the cable.

Also, thanks to the Republicans, we now have a deadline in getting all of this to work. Come February 15 or somewhere around that date, our house is going digital whether we like it or not.

I looked into getting Tivo. It's $300 for the unit and $13 per month for the Tivo service. We originally didn't go that route do to the price. Maybe it would have been cheaper...

How to Save a Small Fortune: (Hint: Spend a Large Fortune)

We went to the marvelous Meadowlands Exposition Center for the Computer Expo today. We went there for two items: A TV Tuner card and a Analog TV to DTV converter box. We got neither. That doesn't mean we didn't spend any money.

Instead, we bought a Philips SRU9600 remote control for $24.99 and a set of four Phillips CD445 phones for $34.99 (one base station/phone combination, and three other non-basestation phones). The phones will replace the two 2.4Ghz cordless phones that we can't use because every time we talk on them, our wireless network goes down. Plus, if we get the Tmobile@Home service, we can't wire it into our house like we can with the Optimum Online service. These four phones, plus another set of three will replace our current set of phones in our house, and T-mobile@Home should be able to handle it.

Since we didn't pick up the TV Tuner card we were looking for at the Computer Expo, we ventured down to Best Buy to pick up a TV Tuner card and a Analog to Digital TV converter. While we were at it, we picked up a 24" Samsung monitor for $325. Yes, this is not the 37" TV that I was planning to buy some day. (I've been married for 25 years, my dreams are small). But, we figured it picture was at least as high as our 21" old analog TV, so it would be just a large a picture. Plus, since it is a computer monitor and not a TV, we could use the MythTV/Boxee box as a computer when no one is watching TV.

My wife was excited about a new computer in the house because she has to share the computer with me. I tend to hog up all the computer time by doing such things as work. It's just so unfair. Anyway, we loaded Firefox, Evolution email, and Open Office (remember, this is a Linux box) on this MythTV/Boxee box for her. Now, with a real computer monitor, and a wireless keyboard and mouse, she can use that for her needs.

We picked out a Pinnacle PCTV HD card from BestBuy which is suppose to be compatible with MythTV. I made sure that the card itself had a low profile. What I didn't check was to make sure that the slot cover on the end actually fits into the slim profile Dell Inspiron 530s that we bought. I ended up removing the back cover off of the card, so it would fit into our computer. Of course, without the back cover on the end of the card, it is rather wobbly.

My son put together the system, and spent about an hour getting the card to work. He found out he had to download the firmware from the card, and then extract it. Fortunately, I was able to help him because of my Unix skills.

Where we stand now

My wife is grumbling under her breath because of the mess of boxes and parts that are strewed throughout our house. We have spent about so far about $1000 for getting rid of cable which we have determined we won't be entirely rid of anyway thanks to their monopoly on high speed Internet in our area.

My son has gotten the TV Tuner card to somewhat work. Except that the picture on the very top is full of static and there is no sound. Boxee and MythTV seem to work fine (although we haven't tried to record a program with the MythTV DVR feature). And, our picture isn't high definition. Plus, every time my son plays a video through Boxee, our router loses contact with our cable modem, and thus our Internet goes down.

It's turning out to be a long hard slog.

More Money Please!

I took my wife out tonight while my son Daniel set up the new MythBuntu OS on our Inspiron. By the time I came back, he had some good news: He got everything working including the wireless. And, some bad news: MythTV/Boxee needs $20 per year in order to give us a TV guide. I was a bit shocked about this because I figured that you could get this information from the Internet for gratis. 

For example, this information is readily available for free from TV Guide. There could be some terms of service that prevents you from scraping the TV guide listings, but then there's a Macintosh Widget that does this very thing. So, I am really surprised by this. It's $20 per year, and not per month, so it isn't an unreasonable amount of money, but it was surprising to see this never the less.

We are also finding some surprising limits. For example, you can watch 60 Minutes on the Web, but we cannot get it to be part of Boxee since it doesn't really have an Internet feed. The CBS station of Boxee doesn't have it, and there's no CBS News station (CBS News is a separate website from CBS). However, we did find Hawaii Five-O.

Tomorrow, it is to beautiful Secaucus to the PC Expo to pick up a TV tuner card.

More Toys Come!

We just got our Dell Inspiron 530S, and what a cheap piece of crap it is! People talk about the Apple Tax, the extra you have to pay to get that formally six color now monochrome logo. Well, there's definitely a reason for it. This is suppose to be a small compact version of the computer, yet, I don't think anyone will mistake this for a Mac Mini. The DVD tray sits about four inches behind the front door in the faux panel. The front door blocks the eject/close button.

Turning on the Inspiron sounded like a wind tunnel. After a minute, though, it did quiet down to a whisper.  There's a lower panel on the faux front that is push-to-open/push-to-close that has nothing behind it. The mouse and keyboard scream cheap-piece-of-junk. Oh well, it is still Intel Inside as the front sticker tells me. I did remove the Windows Vista/Basic sticker though. I am downloading and burning MythBuntu right now as we speak. We'll get it all loaded up.

Too bad we don't have a TV Tuner card. Oh well, maybe tomorrow.

Change is in the Air!

We got the first piece of equipment for our new digital life: A keyboard!

My son convinced me that we should order a wireless keyboard and mouse for our Boxee box. That way, we can use a keyboard when necessary. My wife was excited because it means she might be able to use that as her computer. We originally were planning on not using it as a computer. We were originally planning to put Mythbuntu on it which really doesn't include a desktop. However, I guess there's no reason not to put the full fledge Gnome desktop on the computer, but the resolution won't be very good. Especially if we keep our 13 year old CRT based TV.

On the other fronts: Dell called me to tell me there is a slight delay for my Linux box because they have to start the whole order from scratch. I had tried ordering a TV tuner without upgrading to Vista Home Premium. (The computer comes with Vista Basic). I explained that we were simply going to put another OS on it, so I didn't want to pay $150 for an OS upgrade which we weren't even going to use. Dell was unable to manually override the order, so we had to put in a new order. Fun!

Another problem. T-Mobile screwed up. I've had T-Mobile when it was Omnipoint which got bought by VoiceStream which was acquired by T-Mobile. T-Mobile has always given us great customer service, and had never failed us before.

As I mentioned earlier, we are getting the T-Mobile@Home service. However, we already have five phones on our family plan. Thus, we either have to drop a phone or get new service. The plan is to transfer my wife's phone number to my parent's account. They also have T-Mobile and a family plan, but only three phone numbers. Since my wife rarely uses her phone and doesn't do any texting, she will only be a $10 per month cost for them which I'm paying.

To do this is a bit tricky. First, I contacted T-Mobile and told them that I want to transfer responsibility for my wife's phone to my parent's account. Step two, my mom would call and let them know she approved. After that, T-Mobile transfers the number to my parent's account, then we setup the T-Mobile@Home service and transfer our current home phone number to the T-Mobile@Home service.

Step #1 was completed, and today my mom called T-Mobile. They told her I have to contact T-Mobile in order to authorize this change, then she would have to call up.  But, I had already authorized everything. I called T-Mobile back, and they confirmed I had already authorized the transfer. However, my mom will have to call back once again. This time, I'm calling my mom, then making a three-way conversation between me, my mom, and T-Mobile. Of course, my son Daniel recommended that I do this in the first place. I hate it when he's right. He can get so unbearable.

Verizon: Still Behaving Like a Phone Company

Even more bad news. Verizon, our phone company offers DSL at around 3Mb maximum. To get this rate, we'd have to pay $45/month. We could get a 1Mb service for $30 per month.

We need 1.5Mb service in order to use Boxee, and considering that our cable bills us $50 for 15Mb service, I simply cannot see how Verizon competes.

I could get a package deal: Phone and Internet for only $80 per month. That's $39.99 for the phone, a $6.26 Subscriber Charge, and a $1.29 Federal Universal Fee. By the way, the last two fees are interesting. The $6.26 Subscriber Charge (sometimes called a FCC Charge for Network Access) doesn't go to the government. It's simply a fee that Verizon uses to line their own pockets.

The $1.29 Federal Universal Fee is similar. The government does require Verizon to help subsidize the cost of rural phones, but it doesn't go directly to the government. Instead, it's Verizon's estimate how much it costs them to provide phone service in rural areas.

So, Verizon charges almost $50 per month for what I am now paying $35 per month for. I do save $10 on Internet, but I have to sign a two year contract.

So, the phone company is out of the question. It looks like I have to keep my Internet service with the Cable Company whether I like it or not.

Warning: Doing the Impossible Takes Time

I've had nothing but trouble with this project.

• First of all, my wife is upset over the idea of no land line phone. She will go with the cellphone only idea, but isn't too happy. Thus, we are not going with the cellphone only idea.
  
  There were several options I discussed with my son. We could get a cellphone base station like the dock-n-talk. When you dock your cellphone onto this device, calls are routed to landline phones connected to this device. We have a cordless phone with three extensions, so plugging that into this device would allow us to have three regular house phones. Someone would call my wife's cellphone, and we could answer the cordless phone. We can also dial out of the cordless phones, and the calls would go through the cellphone.
  
  Since my wife has a BlueTooth phone, she wouldn't have to plug her phone into this device. It would automatically connect to her cellphone whenever she's home. Disadvantage is that we're talking about a $200 device. Plus, I'd have to buy a new cordless phone set. We have one cordless phone with three extentions, but we have six phones in the house.
  
  We decided to go with the T-Mobile@Home service. I previously talked about the fact that we can't have more than five lines on our Family Plan, and this would count as one of the lines. We talked about making my oldest son pay for his, but that was silly. It would simply push the cost elsewhere.
  
  Instead, we are going to move my wife's cellphone to my parent's T-Mobile Family Plan. They currently only have three people on their plan, so they have room. Plus, my wife's cellphone usage is minimal, so my parents won't need more minutes. And, my wife doesn't use text messaging, so they don't have to add a text messaging plan to their service.
  
  I've talked to T-Mobile and my parents about this, and they are both okay with this.
  

• The $300 computer is now costing me over $500. We bought a $299 Ispiron 530s from Dell which started out at $299. It has a 2Ghz processor and a 320Gb hard drive, and 3Gb of memory, so it really does match our requirements. However, by the time I added the TV tuner card, the upgraded ATI video card, tax, and shipping, it is now over $500.
  
  Even worse, Dell won't let us put in the TV Tuner card unless we first upgrade to Vista Home Premium. Considering we will be wiping the OS off of this computer, and then installing Mythbuntu, it seemed kind of silly. I explained what I wanted, but Dell is unable to override the order, so the TV tuner card is coming out. Drats.
  
  Doesn't matter. There's a big computer expo in Secaucus this weekend, so I'll stop by there and pick up a TV Tuner card.
  

In the beginning, was the TV remote. And it was good.

Back in 1984, my wife and I listened to the news and heard about AT&T's historic decision to break itself apart into seven local and one long distance service. Before, there was Ma Bell. Ma Bell handled everything. She took care of your long distance service, your local service, and even owned your phones (you were merely renting them from Ma Bell). Now, there would be seven Regional Bell Operating Companies and Ma Bell would be a mere long distance company.

My wife asked me what this meant. I thought about it for a while, and I said it would mean that one day you'd be able to watch TV over the phone lines and make telephone calls over the cable lines.

I tell this story for two reasons. 1). So, you realize how old and decrepit I am, and 2). You realize how wrong I was.

Now, you might be saying to yourself "Hey, Dave, you're an absolute genius. That's exactly what happened! Today, the cable company offers you phone service and you can watch TV from the phone company!".

I would like to point out that this isn't exactly my prediction. Yes, I saw this coming, but I figured that we'd be doing all of this by 1994. What I didn't take into account was the fact that the two companies I mentioned, the cable and phone companies, are probably the most incompetently run corporations you can imagine. Heck, I took that into account! That's why I figured it'll take 10 years and not merely 2 or 3 years.

Now, let's run ahead a couple of decades to today. About a year and a half ago, I signed up for Optimum's Triple Play package. Phone, Internet, and cable from a single service, and all for under $100 per month. For the first year, everything was peachy. I had no problems with the service. Then, in June, when they increased our monthly bill by $60, we experienced our first major outage. I had no service for an entire week. I pleaded, screamed, threatened, and cajoled. CableVision was unable to get a service guy out earlier than that. CableVision seemed unable to understand that they weren't merely our cable provider, they provided our phone service. You know the little thing you'd use to call the fire department when your house is on fire?

Since then, we've experienced major outages at least every other month. And, several times per month, we experience service outages of several hours.

Last Saturday night, I had to log into my company's system to do some major maintenance. Imagine my surprise when my Internet and phone service were again down. This was more than an inconvenience. This was affecting my ability to do my job. I called customer service and torn into them, and CableVision sent out a senior tech on Sunday to see what was wrong.

You have to understand that CableVision had just sent out a tech on Sunday the week before. I've recently had my entire cable rewired. We had to move our cable modem, we had a guy come out on the pole near our house. We were promised that everything was all better. And, now this.

The tech came out, and spent about two hours figuring out the problem. His diagnosis is that our entire neighborhood had wiring problems, and the OptimumBoost service. The service I paid $10 per month extra for was causing problems. Even worse, I was not getting the benefits of this service since our neighborhood wiring couldn't support it. That's cable company!

Now let's go back to last fall when we finally got the Cable company to admit that they were charging us for OptimumBoost, but never provided the service. Seems that they have two computers systems: One bills you for the service, and the other requisitions you for the service. Seems like a funny thing happened. Their billing computer thought we were suppose to have OptimumBoost, but their requisition system didn't know this.

Anyway, the Cable company can get away with this behavior because they are a monopoly. If I want Comedy Central, whom can I turn to? If they want to raise their rates, reduce my service, or simply pull the plug, what am I suppose to do?

Well, I looked over the bill, and thought "Why in the heck am I paying for this service? Everyone in my family has cellphones, so why do I have a land line? We don't watch that much TV. Most of what my wife watches is on the broadcast networks. I watch the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, but those are available on the Internet. Why am I paying $80 per month for cable when I barely watch TV? Why am I paying $35 for a land line when we are already paying $80 per month to keep our family in cellphones?

Yesterday, my son Daniel and I downloaded Boxee. It is a free program that you can put on a small computer that will download many major programs over the Internet via broadcaster webpages and services like Hulu. A small Linux computer would be about $300. We'd need a highspeed Internet service, and a new antenna. However, in a few months, we'd more than make back our money.

We decided to go for it. Eliminate the cable TV and the land line. Try to get Internet service from elsewhere, and say goodbye to the cable company. We talked about various landline options. My sons and I live with our cellphones, so we wouldn't miss the land line. However, my wife doesn't like cellphones (too many buttons), so she wouldn't be too happy getting rid of our phone. I'll talk to her tonight about it. With the land line dropped, we'd save $34 per month. We'd have to up our cellphone minutes, but that's just $10 per month.

A possible option is something called T-Mobile@Home. It's $10 per month, and we are already T-Mobile customers. That would be perfect except that we already have the maximum of five lines on our family plan. In order to get that service, we'd have to make one of our cellphone lines a separate service.

We talked about making my oldest son pay for his own cellphone. After all, he's going to Graduate School next year, and I am certainly not planning to pay for his cellphone for the rest of his life. However, separating out the phone and adding texting would be about $40 per month. Plus the extra $10 for the T-Mobile@Home, and we're paying even more than before. The idea was to save money.

It looks like we'll be dropping our land line. That is, if I can convince my wife it is worth the savings.