Electronics recycling may be easier than you think. The Take It Back listings include more than 20 options for recycling and donating equipment. For that old computer monitor you're using as a doorstop, for example, you'll find 16 local companies and organizations that will accept it, and you'll see how much they charge.
Acquaint yourself with the official no-no's. Folks who run college and university housing are a laptop battery realistic bunch. They tend to get in a twist only over infractions that cause big fires, ceiling cave-ins or congressional inquiries.
"We have the usual list of things you should not bring, like weapons, halogen lights and pets," said Jed Schwendiman, associate director of housing for Whitman College in Walla Walla. Goldfish are fine, however. "We like to say that if it can hold its breath underwater for 20 minutes, it's acceptable," said Schwendiman.
But others just cried."We've been waiting too long," said Alicia Alviles, about her Sony VGP-BPS5 Battery 1-year-old son, who was bucking and struggling against his stroller restraints.
The evacuation, which began around noon yesterday, delayed at least nine flights and inconvenienced thousands of travelers, said Port of Seattle spokesman Bob Parker.He said it apparently started when a 48-year-old Missouri man traveling to Kansas City went through the initial screening gate and was asked to step aside for a more thorough search.
People who resigned themselves to juggling multiple gadgets — cellphone, handheld, BlackBerry pager — can now get most of the same functions in one Sony VGP-BPS8 Battery handheld. But how well does such a combo device perform?
To find out, I used two recent handhelds from Palm: the Tungsten W, which uses the AT&T Wireless cellular network, and the Tungsten C, which doesn't offer phone capabilities but gets its wireless Internet access using much faster Wi-Fi (also known as 802.11b) networking. Although roughly comparable in price and offering overlapping features, each handheld appeals to different types of users.
On a recent Friday night, at a party in Madison Park packed with tattooed twentysomethings, I reached into my back pocket and pulled out what I had hoped HP DV2700 battery would make me instantly popular: 3Com's new Palm VII - the first palm-sized computer to allow Web browsing and e-mail exchange without an external modem or cell phone.
With the swagger of Captain Kirk flipping open his communicator, I raised the unit's antenna and, almost instantly, became the center of attention. "What is it?" bubbled a woman. "Can you surf the Internet with that thing?" droned a tangle-haired man.
Having a fast Internet connection on the laptop — which 3G also enables — is a no-brainer, but there is no difference in call quality when talking on a faster HP Dv2700 battery speed network. Zero. Zilch.So why would anyone need a 3G phone?To find out, I tried out the service for a couple of weeks on a phone made by handset maker LG, the VX8000 model.
