I have installed the RIM software in the past, but now I have not been able to make it work any longer. It takes 45 minutes to install, and you have to promise to buy Blackberry service to install, and I told it I would so I could back up my sim card contacts, but I don't have Blackberry service. The software did not connect, yet it deleted all my contacts from my sim. Furthermore, you have to give all your information to Blackberry your name, address,your profession, first born child etc. and it takes a very long time to type in all of that. If you do it once you still have to type it in again each time you download the software. The RIM software is buggy, you will need to reinstall it frequently if it works at all. I will never use the RIM software again. I have seen usb sim card readers for as low as 4.99. They told me I should either buy a new phone or use the RIM software. That is why I am posting here to see if anyone else has used a sim back up usb device and if so what brand did they use. I can't understand why tmobile would suggest I spend $300 to buy a new phone rather then spend 4.99. The sim card goes into the usb, it's a card reader. They have one if you look on Amazon, but it got a low review. New Egg also has card readers with slots to insert a SIM card, the same way you would the memory card from your camera. I would assume you can also edit your contacts via computer. Tmobile should get in touch with reality.

I still had lots of food in the house, but DH told me to go ahead and stock up since he'll probably be on the road for 5-6 weeks this time and the immediate future of our para-transit sytem is iffy at best right now due to budget cuts. (We won't know its fate until March 19. On the 22nd, we'll either have it or it's immediately gone.) So, hey, I'm no dummy. I stocked up. Trader Joes - greek yogurt eggs Cheddar cheese bacon almonds frozen haibut frozen green beans frozen mixed veggies frozen mixed peppers frozen naan butter canned diced tomatos quinoa mustard Regular Grocery Store bread Tortillas raisins black beans lentils canned tuna (my lucky day - albacore at .79 a can!) 5# chicken breasts (on sale at .99 a pound!) 2# pork bag of baking potaotes 2 cucumbers 3 onions 2 gree peppers # asparagas quart strawberries 1/2 gal milk canned mixed fruit # bananas # mushrooms garlic limes flour olive oil freezer bags pinto beans # coffee 2 boxes tea bags On the clearance shelf, we found organic pommegranate juice, V8, cherry juice and peanuts for $1.00 eash. The store isn't going to carry them anymore. So we got two each of those. And I had coupons for two free bottles of laundry soap that expire at the end of the month, so I got those now. Total - too much. OTOH, I'm set for another 4-5 weeks except highly perishable items like lettuce or milk. (Althogh I have some canned milk if I really need it.) That doesn't include the things we get for DH to take on the road as I consider his road supplies separate from my grocery budget.

Back several years ago, I bought a long-distance calling card. Don't remember the brand, I think I got it at WMT. It was ten cents a minute no matter where you called (except maybe overseas, but we don't know anyone overseas so that wasn't a problem for us.). You just dialed the number on the back of the card and then at the prompt, the number you wanted to call. Then I called Southwestern Bell (it's AT&T now) and told them I wanted the long-distance feature taken off my land line. The guy I talked to assured me he'd done what I wanted and then when I got my bill I found out he'd added a lot of services I didn't ask for. It took me a long time to get that sorted out and corrected. Eventually, someone made a long-distance call on the land line without using the card, and the long-distance feature was automatically placed back on my bill. I've been paying $6 every month ever since, for just having (but not using) this feature. I just haven't had the resolve to go through all that again. You can buy those pre-paid Go-phones, but if you don't buy new minutes every month, what you have left from the current month expire and you lose them. Frankly, I found the Go-phones a royal pain. Plus, if you do the ten cents a minute plan, it doesn't cost you to call someone else who has a go-phone, but they charge you a dollar a day for every day that you place a call from your phone. It all gets very complicated and I just wish somebody would come up with something simple, no hidden surcharges. I have a cell phone that we use for emergencies (grandson carries it, mostly, when he's out and about, in case he has car trouble and needs us). It costs $10 a month and .25 a minute for every call. Plus there are surcharges. So if we don't use the phone at all in any given month it's actually about $12 a month. We had the $20 plan that came with 100 free minutes, but we found that we didn't use that many minutes a month. With the surcharges, the bill for that was $24. It's a Consumer Cellular product. DD uses Virgin Mobile and has about the same kind of plan that we do. You do have to watch your land phone bill, too, for surprises. Where I was working last, before I retired, I had to arrange with AT&T to get internet service through them. For that I had to have a copy of the last bill (which I didn't normally see) so I'd have the information I needed to give AT&T. I noticed, on the last page, a "yellow pages" charge of $25. No one at the office seemed to know what it was for. When I investigated, I discovered that someone had called our business a year earlier, had spoken to someone on the phone that had no business authorizing any transaction and had offered them free internet advertising. Turns out the advertising was on some obscure website; it was free for one month only and then you would incur charges for every month thereafter if you didn't instruct them to discontinue. Of course no one did. For a whole year. Longer if I hadn't noticed it. The person who authorized the transaction had no idea that she had done so. She just thought she was getting some free advertising for the non-profit organization. Seems there's a scam every minute. --Ilene

Hmmm ... I hate to disagree with hollysprings since I have a lot of respect for her, but I'm not sure the analogy works for me. First, apples from one store can be very different from apples from another store. Cabinets from the same source should be the same ... for the exact same order, which they may not be, but if they were ... I'm not sure how well the cell phone analogy holds. Certainly signal quality matters but for the same phone and carrier, it doesn't matter whether I get my phone from Best Buy or Walmart. And once I buy the phone, all the customer service goes through the carrier anyway. It's unclear to me how much a KD/reseller is going to help if there are issues post-install. Call me a pessimist, but I'm not sure I expect a lot of help if I have a cabinet problem after five years. I know a friend who needed cabinet help after ten years (not a flaw in her Crystal cabinets but water from the upper story) and the retailer was no longer in business. The fact is, once I have the cabinets installed, the KD isn't really part of my life anymore. Not true of cell phones. Or the place I buy my apples, since I go there every week. I do believe KDs can help a lot with a good design and making the order and install process as painless as possible. KDs certainly aren't all the same in that regard and that's definitely worth something. I think in general it's not an easy call. It's hard to evaluate the comparative skill/value add of a particular KD. On the other hand, generally the price differences haven't been so dramatically different. But I've had quotes for the same the product at 22K and 28K. It's hard for me to see a 6K/27% value add. In this particular case, it's a particularly tough call because one KD sells only this brand while the other KD is only starting to carry the brand so there's definite difference. In general, I'd rule out the new-to-the-brand KD except I know the local manufacturer's rep would be holding her hand through the order so it's not an obvious non-starter. 6K is a lot of money ... (FWIW, in the end, I'm probably going with a custom builder, so it's probably moot ... which I'm kind of glad of. It'd be a tough call ...)