How To Duck Cell Phone Taxes – Forbes.com

Cell phones have not been proven to cause cancer, so why exactly are they taxed like they do?

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Exorbitant cell phone taxes may seem like one of life’s annoyances you just can’t do anything about. In fact, as I recently discovered, you can.

This falls under the “:thunk: I shoulda thought of that!” category. I wonder if you need a “real” out of state address, like a PO box, or if it can just be any random address? East Palo Alto charges its own “Utility Tax” on my Sprint PCS account on top of California’s and federal taxes.

At long last, I’m up to date on restaurant reviews with thirteen new reviews up, covering the last two and a half months.

The other day I was deep in thought about and suddenly had one of those “A-HA!” moments. It’s not that I came up with a solution to my problem, but rather I decided to forget my troubles and go watch an ’80s Norwegian music video instead.

(Kim Moser, via ruminate.com)

You can find out only at “The Joy of Tech!”

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My office PC has an ATI Radeon VE video card with a DVI connector. Right now I am using a DVI-SVGA “Y” cable to run two Dell M992 19″ CRTs in Windows’ “extended desktop” mode, for an effective desktop resolution of 2560×1024 (32-bit color, 85Hz).

I have two Dell 1704FPT 17″ LCD monitors available (from a shipment of seven, five of which have already been deployed to other lucky people). The 1704FPT can run in either digital (DVI) or analog (SVGA) mode, and the Radeon VE can run one display directly through DVI, or two when the DVI connector is split to two SVGA as I have now.

So my decision is this. Should I:

A) Do nothing. Keep my dual 19″ CRT setup.

B) Swap both 19″ CRTs for 17″ LCDs. Bear in mind that 19″ CRTs have roughly 17″ viewable area, while 17″ LCDs use the full panel. So the viewing areas are equivalent. However, the LCDs would be running in analog mode, and can’t display 1280×1024 at 85Hz.

C) Swap both 19″ CRTs for a single 17″ LCD running in digital mode.

I’m leaning toward “B”, sacrificing the high refresh rate for acres of reclaimed desk space. It’s my understanding that refresh rate is not nearly as important on LCDs as it is on CRTs, anyway. I’ll have to deal with envious glances from other people who don’t even have one LCD when they look at my two, but Rank Hath Its Privileges.

Your opinions?