Apple’s retail stores have been called “the best place to buy a cell phone” by no less an organ than June’s Consumer Reports — despite the company only selling one model of the device!

Consumer Report's report cites a survey across 11,000 readers conducted last year by the mag’s National Research Center. Apple’s stores got [...]]]>

Apple’s retail stores have been called “the best place to buy a cell phone” by no less an organ than June’s Consumer Reports — despite the company only selling one model of the device!

Consumer Report's report cites a survey across 11,000 readers conducted last year by the mag’s National Research Center. Apple’s stores got ‘especially high’ marks for activation and check out.

Overall the company took an 84 percent satisfaction rating.

Others in the list (in order) include:

• US Cellular (80)
• Costco (79)
• Best Buy (79)
• Walmart (77)
• Verizon (76)
• AT&T Wireless (76)
• T-Mobile (76)
• Sprint/Nextel (74)
• Alltel (74)

Verizon’s online retail operations came in at 80 percent, top of the pack and ahead of ATT online, with 75 percent.

via Consumer Reports says Apple retail’s the best place to buy a phone! | 9 to 5 Mac.

So here I am, getting ready for a cruise out to the Caribbean on the gorgeous Norwegian Cruise Line Pearl.  My luggage are packed with summer clothes, snorkelling equipment bought at Costco, Sun block lotion, etc, etc.

I am also packing some essential techno gear with me for the trip.  For taking pictures of the [...]]]>

So here I am, getting ready for a cruise out to the Caribbean on the gorgeous Norwegian Cruise Line Pearl.  My luggage are packed with summer clothes, snorkelling equipment bought at Costco, Sun block lotion, etc, etc.

I am also packing some essential techno gear with me for the trip.  For taking pictures of the vacation I am bringing my Canon EOS 500D, to take some movie I pack a Flip Mino HD and also the Canon EOS 500D, for emergency phone and contact info my trusty iPhone 3G and finally, to glue all those other devices together I will be using a Dell mini 10v.

Why pick the 10v?  I think this is the perfect device for a cruise.  It is small yet powerful enough to do email, web surfing, photo editing and even act as my data storage to offload those pictures and movies from the cameras.

The screen and keyboard on the 10v are large enough for my eyes to see web content very well and type with my clumsy fingers.

I replaced the built-in copy of XP with WIN7 to get faster response time at the cost of less battery life time (thanks WIN7 for that ;-(). This should not be an issue on the cruise ship as I can recharge all I want.

I will only really know for sure how using the 10v turn out but I am sure it is the best choice out of my much larger Dell e6400, 13” Macbook or Dell Mini 9.  For sure I would have liked to use OSX as my main OSX and yes I know one can run it on the 10v… but frankly I would not rely on it a my only system out at sea on a cruise.  Not that I think WIN7 is better than OSX but only that on the 10v WIN7 make a better OS right now.

Anything larger than 10inch get to be too big to put in a small backpack for those excursion days so netbook size is a must.