A lot of people are finding out that no keyboard means you get really screwed if your screen cracks. My son & I refuse to use touch screen; my 19 year old daughter had a $300 Motorola touch android since September 2011 & just got rid of it for a Kyocera (lists for $100; I bought for $80 with coupon) with keyboard. No matter how much my daughter tried to protect the touch phone; it always knocked into something face up. She's been through 3 phones in 1 year. I've been paying insurance ($5 a month) that was worthless because the manufacturer has a 1 year warranty. If your son is new to these types of phones; you may want to consider switching him to Virgin; especially if plan price has a lot to do with it. If they do not know what they are doing; you could be looking at a really expensive bill.. Been there with Verizon with my daughter when she changed phones. Someone on AT&T can tell you better what to look out for. All sorts of things can happen; parental controls get unset; they don't pay attention to how much data they use; they may not text photos but someone may text it to them. Each phone seems to handle pics different. My blackberry sends them via MMS (data); her android sends via text. With any phone that goes online; there is a way to allow it to use a wireless network so that they do not have to use the data if not unlimited. My hub is the only one with an iphone; he's not had luck with it. For some reason he's able to update the phone from the phone itself but if he does it via his windows computer & Itunes; it gets wiped out. Having a backup can mean nothing too because there is a glitch where the saved backup will end up with a password when he did not have one on it. There doesn't seem to be a way to get around it either; so he lost a lot of information with that glitch. You also can only sync it with one copy of itunes; so if he left his laptop in his work truck in another state; he can't back it up on the home computer.

I think if you can save your barn, you should try. It's sad to see barns go. We bought our farm 5 years ago, and have a barn, corn crib, and a few other outbuilding. We are also restoring the house, so we haven't done much to the barn, except tearing down a metal building that the PO attached to the back. The rain was rotting the barn siding where the roof of this nasty metal barn met the old barn. Our barn has good bones, but the skin is just horrible, because the PO just let it go. :( We have to do things ourselves, so my husband just took down a barn that was gorgeous, but the owners (big time farmers) wanted it off this piece of vacant land due to the taxes! :( It made me sick, but luckily, my husband was the one to take it down. He salvaged the siding, and beams and other pieces, and we will use the siding to replace the siding on our barn. I want the barn to remain wood, so this works great. My fil also wanted his gorgeous barn down about 8 years ago, and my dh did that too and kept all the wood. The farmer that owned the barn that my dh just took down, also has 1 more and possibly 2 more that he wants gone, so we are really lucky there. He also has a gorgeous old home with curved top windows and awesome trim, that is need of some repair, that he wants to tear down!! It just makes me sick! Anyway, is there any possible way that you could find a barn to take down and use the wood from that to fix anything on your siding? Then, you will just have to worry about the roof. Good luck with your decision. I'd try everything possible to save your barn though if you can!

I've been reading The Gulag Archipelago and have managed to get through Volumes I & II. However, before I tackle Volume III, I decided to take a break to read a couple of "Golden Age Mysteries." Ha! The book I chose first was written by an obscure-to-me author, Annie Haynes, and was first published in 1924. The Secret of Greylands thoroughly confused me! I thought I was reading a Victorian sensation novel along the lines of Wilkie Collins or Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret, maybe even Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Everyone was either walking or being transported around the north-country (Northumberland?) in farm wagons, dog carts, or carriages. Then out of the blue a 'motor' (motor car) appeared on a road. The King was mentioned, but the Great War was not. Women still wore long skirts and 'sunshades' (evidently some sort of bonnet, not a parasol or tinted spectacles). I worked out that the time setting must have been Edwardian or perhaps early in the reign of George V before the war. The story was melodramatic, the characters were usually histrionic, and the plot was almost transparent. Still, I kept reading because it was entertaining in its absurdity. The male love interest spent years traipsing Australia, South Africa and Central America on big game hunts and other manly activities. Was he hunting jaguars and iguanas in C. America? It was never revealed. This was a very creepy book, in its own way. I read the notes about the author and learned Haynes was born in 1865. She had some sort of degenerative disease that wheelchair bound her. She was an ardent feminist who lived in London but created her stories mostly from her imagination and remembrance of an earlier age. Her books are said to be a bridge between popular Victorian-Age books and ones of the Jazz Age in the 1920s. She died in 1929 and her reputation faded. Perhaps unjustly, but I really don't think she could ever have given Agatha Christie or Sayers much competition. But if a reader is in the right mood to read a 'real' throwback, Miss Haynes did a creditable job!

" And I understand there is a long-standing rivalry, love/hate relationship between Google and Samsung, which may be a factor " I think that's baloney. All hardware manufacturers have their own house-brand apps, and the two smartphone OS companies (Google for Android, Apple for iOS) have many of the same. As an example, on an iPhone, you can use Apple Maps or the competing Google Maps. The iphone has Apple's contact and calendar apps pre-loaded and there are Google ones that substitute one for one. (In these three cases, I think the Google apps are better). Also, an Apple mail app or a Google Gmail app in its place. All of the Android smartphone hardware manufacturers work closely with Google (and vice-versa) because they need to, to maximize the functionality of their phones. In the smartphone hardware sector, Google and Samsung are competitors. What kind of relationship do you expect competitors to have. By the way, the website linked above is anything BUT authoritative. The whole site is clickbait, it earns revenue through commissions on click through views from links on its site. Just like the phony "dog food review" site run by a dentist. This is a demonstration about "don't believe everything you come upon online", nor assume anything about the authenticity or validity of information.