If you haven’t purchased an iPhone 3G yet, you can now do so at your local Best Buy.  Best Buy became the 3rd retail location (Apple Store, At&t Locations, and  now Best Buy) to be an authorized reseller of Apple’s iPhone.

Best Buy has received its initial stock and the iPhone is available for sale.  Again, like all other retail locations, individual buyers will need to sign a 2 year contract with At&t to purchase the phone.  

The electronic retail giant has all three models of the iPhone (8gb Black, 16gb White, 16gb Black) but purchases must be made in store.  

Picking up your iPhone from Best Buy makes sense for you Best Buy Reward Zone members as you’ll get points for your purchase.

It appears that At&t is having issues with their 3G and Edge networks this morning.  I was at work and both my co-workers who have brand new iPhones were unable to get any internet connection for any of their apps over 3G or Edge.  

Since both individuals were unable to get access, and despite the full connection status bars displayed on the phone, we figured it must be a network outage. 

Techcrunch confirmed this theory as many other individuals across the Northeast US are having issues connecting to the internet on their iPhones.  Some reports say this is impacting all At&t users and not just those with iPhones. 

Techcrunch is also reporting that At&t is aware of the problem and is looking into it.  Hopefully their “looking into it” consists of them fixing them problem and not just identifying it.   It seems more often than not that Apple’s pick of At&t as the network provider in the US may have been a big mistake…

Are you having trouble with your iPhone connection?

Now that the initial iPhone 3g craze has passed and you no longer have to wait in long lines to pick up your own iPhone it may be the perfect time to be the newest iPhone owner. But before you make that purchase you may want to compare the iPhone 3g to the iPod Touch one more time.

The chart below shows that while the iPhone 3g does have all the features of the iPod Touch but with some additions and more flexibility, but the total 2 year costs is over $1500 more than the slightly less featured iPod Touch.

It may be an easy and clear decision for you that the iPhone is the way to go as you’d be paying similar prices if you combined your iPod Touch price with your Cell Phone subscription for 2 years but don’t over look the value of the iPod Touch. It can do almost everything an iPhone can do when you’re in WiFi locations such as your home or work, and I imagine for many of us those are the two places we spend most of our time.

While I can see value added with the flexibility of the iPhone I do understand that those extra features may not be enough for everyone. So, if you haven’t already made a decision, review the feature sets, costs, and how you feel you’ll use the devise to see if the iPhone 3g or the iPod Touch is perfect for you.

When Apple released the Macbook Air many questioned their belief that many people no longer need a CD or DVD drive on their notebooks. While others focused on the notebooks lack of ability to quickly play DVD media or import the latest audio CD tracks, I was more concerned with how the notebook would handle the times it needs a fresh OS install.

Apple did provide a custom external DVD drive that would make this process no different than any other notebook but I was interested in how they would handle the approach for individuals like me that didn’t want to pay and extra $99 for the DVD drive.

So, I recently undertook the challenge of reinstalling a fresh version of OS X on my Macbook Air without an external DVD drive.

Apple was successful in making the process simple, but there were a few hiccups along the way. The following details include instructions on how to install OS X on a Macbook Air without an external DVD drive. I’ll discuss the problems I came across at the corresponding step.

How To Reinstall OS X on a Macbook Air Without a DVD Drive

First thing you need to do before you attempt to reinstall OS X is to setup another computer on your network to share their DVD drive with the Macbook Air. Many of you may have done this when you first setup your Macbook Air. After this has been setup you’ll need to insert the OS X disk into the DVD drive and if you’re using a Windows Computer select Remote install OS X or navigate to /Applications/Utilities/ and
launch the Remote Install OS X application.

After the application has launched click continue to prepare for the installation.

You’ll next need to select the OS X drive that you previously inserted into your DVD drive on the other computer.

Select if you’d like to connect your computers through an Ethernet setup or over AirPort. If you do not have an Ethernet USB adapter for the Macbook Air you’ll have to select AirPort. The next steps get a bit more complicated.

Now that you’ve returned to your Macbook Air, reboot the system and hold down Option until you see a screen that lets you select the boot drive.

You’ll notice on the screen that you can select the network you’d like to join. You must select the same network that your other computer is on. I could not connect to my wireless network at first but after some trouble shooting I managed to connect the Macbook Air to my home network from the boot screen. I had to disable WEP and any other wireless security encryption before the Macbook Air would find the network.

After I found and connected to the network, the OS X disk on my other computer appeared and was a boot option. Select it and continue.

After selecting the DVD for boot the system will restart to that boot device. This may take some time.

After the system starts you’ll select the language and installation settings (be sure to include the iLife if you would like that included on your Macbook Air) and then the install will begin. This will take a while. It took me close to 4 hours before the installation completed. Obviously this is related to the data transfer limits of a wireless network. If you’re short on time, you may want to look into setting up a USB device that you can install OS X 10.5 from.

The Macbook Air may reboot once or twice during the install and ask for the 2nd DVD if you select to install iLife at this time. Once over thing is complete the computer will restart and be just the way it was when you first purchased it.

Conclusion

While the reinstallation process would be considerably shorter if a DVD drive was somehow included on the Macbook Air, the computer is still capable of easily walking a user through formatting and reinstalling OS X on the notebook. The major difficulties people will have is with connecting to their wireless networks and keeping that connection through the 4 hour install period.

Although I have still yet to purchase an iPhone (I’m waiting until after the mass hesteria that will ensue Friday morning at Apple stores and AT&T outlines around the country) I thought it was interesting that the folks over at macrumors.com have discovered the location of the iPhone 2.0 firmware.

Yes, it is true, that you can download the iPhone 2.0 Firmware here:

iPhone1,2_2.0_5A347_Restore.ipsw (download link).
According to the article at macrumors, the firmware is slightly higher than previous builds they’ve seen and will require a bit of attention while installing.  It appears, that for the install to function properly that all media on the iPhone will be erased.   Luckily, iTunes will allow you to back up all your media onto your Mac or PC before the installation.

Additionally, to install this firmware you must hold the Option key while pressing the “Check For Updates” in iTunes.

Head over to macrumors.com for more details.