Well, the hits against the iPad keep coming. If you thought the device would tether with the iPhone, you were wrong. Engadget confirmed it yesterday.

Have you accidently used the data services on your Rogers mobile phone while in the USA? It’s not a cheap mistake. There are some massive add-on fees when you use data in the USA. Well today rogers introduced a new option for most data plan customers. On certain data plans, for an extra $10 you can use data in the USA at the same rate that you have in Canada. For frequent travellers this will dramatically reduce your data fee costs.

More information on the Roger’s site.

Gizmodo created this excellent depiction of Photoshop and how it’s changed over the years. Now 20 years old, Photoshop continues to be the “go to” tool for photographers everywhere.

Have a spiffy Solid State Drive (SSD) in your computer. Take these steps to optimize it’s performance – and it all starts with Windows 7. This TweakTown guide offers 8 pages of advice on how to squeeze the most performance of these drives. Unfortunately, early adoptors probably have SSD’s that do not support the TRIM command that will prevent drive performance from degrading over time.

The collective internet wisdom is so far unimpressed with the iPad. It strikes me as a cool toy but not a very visionary device and nothing that many of Apple’s competitors couldn’t copy and improve on.

Asus, Acer, HP, Dell – All of them had existing tablet plans which they are slow playing while they waited for the iPad announcement. Expect a slew of tablet announcements in the coming weeks. I except these tablets to have many features missing from the iPad: accepting external storage (USB or SD), pen/stylus input, “open” operating systems and lower price points. Expect them to come in many sizes from 5″ to 12″.

Microsoft and Google – The OS divisions of both companies may be able to capitalize on some Apple’s missteps. With Windows 7 capable of running on a Atom processor and Android far more advanced than it’s horrible 1.x versions, they may finally be in a place to come up with an iPad alternative. Microsoft is going to have to rely on Windows 7 not Windows Mobile.

Jailbreakers and Unlockers – As I type this a legion of hackers are working on the iPad SDK looking to be the first to hack it. No wonder geohot is letting others do the PS3 hacking.

I’m a big fan of thin notebooks and more and more laptops are using the Intel CULV platform for new, thin form factors. Acer has their timeline series. HP has their Envy line, and now Asus has the UL line.

The UL30Vt is an update to the UL30 introduced earlier. This one keeps the same form factor but adds a dedicated nVidia graphics card that can be switched on or off to conserve battery life. Like the HP Envy, this notebook apes many of the MacBook’s styling – chicklet keyboard, brushed aluminum, thin and smooth surfaces.

• Intel SU7300 Core 2 Duo Processor 1.3GHz
• 4GB of DDR3 RAM, 2 slots, 8GB Max
• 500GB SATA Hard Drive (5400 RPM)
• NVidia G210M Graphics with 512MB DDR3 + Intel GMA 4500MHD (Switchable VGA)
• 13.3-Inch Widescreen HD LED LCD Display; Wi-Fi 802.11 bgn; Bluetooth; 0.3M Webcam

I upgraded all my computers to Windows 7 this week. My recommendation is to do a clean install and put on the 64-bit version (you should receive discs for both 32 and 64-bit versions). A clean install means that your existing installing is not upgraded, and the disc is erased before installing. Back up all your files before doing a clean install. A clean install ensures that legacy applications, spyware, settings and configuration are gone and Windows 7 can perform at it’s best.

If you bought an upgrade version of Windows 7, you can still do a clean install.  At the end of installation when you enter your license key, Windows 7 will most likely not accept it. This is because the install is expecting a previous installation of Windows in order to use an “upgrade” type of license. The good news is that there are two workarounds. All are documented on SuperSite for Windows, but I’ll summarize the basic techniques here. For full instructions check out his detailed sites. Microsoft has gone on record that these are legal means of installing, given that you satisfy the license requirements (read: you own a previous version of XP or Vista).

1) Modify the registry key, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE/MediaBootInstall, to “0″. Reboot and run the command “slmgr /rearm” from an Administrator command prompt.

2) Complete a clean install of Windows 7, skip the license step, and then do another clean install of Windows 7. The second install will accept an upgrade license key.

This laptop reliability survey was released today. It’s pretty clear who the winners and losers are.

In the article itself I’m glad they broke down the laptop failures between entry level and premium laptops. I’ve found the business laptops to always be much better built and more reliable than the consumer (read: Future Shop) models and the data holds true. Netbooks had the worst reliability.

Jailbroken iPhones all have one thing in common, the SSH application is installed on them. This is used as part of the jailbreaking process. Thing is, someone can use this to log into your phone and wreck havoc on it. Especially since the default password is well known.

Follow this tutorial to change the default password of your Jailbroken iPhone. If you’re not jailbroken, don’t worry, you are safe.

Did you just get Windows 7? Well head on over the Microsoft’s Personalization Gallery for some free themes to customize the look of your new OS. This includes free themes from sports car companies Ferrari and Porsche amoung others.