Good Things, Bad Things: Technology

This post is part of the "Good Things, Bad Things" list I am trying to compile to describe our life here in Cincinnati before the first anniversary of our relocation.

A good thing about life here is the abundance of gadgets and technology. But it is not uniformly distributed around the US, between companies, or among people. For example, we are connected to the internet using a fiber optic cable and we have a bandwidth of 30Mbps download. That's something that most Americans can't get because the infrastructure just doesn't get to their houses. Some of them also don't want to be connected to the internet all the time, and prefer the old fashioned dial up.
However, if you are a technology enthusiast, like we are, you can get almost anything you want, for a price that is. I have a new Kindle2, which can download books using the cellular network provided for "free" by Amazon ("free" means it's part of the book's cost and there is no extra charge for it).

When we first moved here we decided that since we didn't have a lot of money we should not get a TV and rely on internet connection and online entertainment options. As most of these websites don't work outside of the United States, Israelis rarely experience them. However, we have found out that we can follow almost every show that plays, a day or two after it was aired, at any of the websites of TV channels: ABC, NBC, TBS, CNN, and I guess several more - all have sites that allow you to watch TV. There is also Hulu, which aggregates several of these networks for our convenience. From Israel we can watch channel 10 (except for the football games, which was very annoying), but their relying on Windows Media technologies is very annoying compared to the superior Flash technology that all American channels use nowadays.
And then you have Netflix, which for a very small fee a month ($9) streams unlimited videos and TV shows which were distributed on DVDs, or sends the DVDs (one at a time) home.
So, basically, we don't need any TV now. In the future we may get a computer to act as a media player and stream all the videos that we want to a computer monitor (30 inch maybe?).

The main problem nowadays is cellular connection. When we first arrived here this was one of the first thing we did, thinking that we will have to communicate in some way or another with one another and with others. So we went to the only company that was generous enough to give us a plan without credit history: Verizon. It was a huge disappointment. It seems that the company messes up the user interface of it's phones, in the name of uniformity and "ease of use". I couldn't deal with my pay-as-you-go phone, which was really horrible, and switched to T-Mobile as soon as I could. There I could keep my old Sony-Ericsson, because they have a GSM network, but they don't have a 3rd generation network in Cincinnati area. How pathetic is that? And what good does it do anyone that they have Google phones if they don't have the 3rd generation infrastructure to support them? In general it seems that none of the American networks supports 3G very well outside the main cities along the coast. And that is my main complaint about American technology: you can get it, but it is limited to the rich areas and rich people living in them. Try to get internet connection or 3G in Kansas or North Dakota. You'll be happy to have limited cellular connection and dial up internet there...