Great article from Charles Arthur, the Guardian's Twechnology editor on the paper's website. Arthur convincingly shows why Apple should offer a netbook, a budget laptop designed for essential tasks such as browsing the internet and sending emails. He points out that the iPod only became the dominant MP3 player after Apple offered cheaper versions.

I'd love to have an Apple laptop as a desktop replacement. But right now, the only 17inch Mac laptop costs a staggering £1,949. I love Apple products, but I'd have to have more money than sense to pay that kind of money when a comparable Windows laptop is well over £1,000 cheaper.

As Arthur says, premium brands in many sectors, such as BMW, are hurting badly as the recession bites. The Guardian reports NPD's view that Apple's US sales are already falling.  I don't doubt that Apple can justify a certain premium, as its products are more stylish and easier to use than rival ones. But in tough times, we're all more likely to ask if we're getting value for money. If Arthur is right, the rise of the netbook offers Apple the chance to 'do an iPod' in capturing a far bigger chunk of the market by abandoning its premium pricing model. It will be interesting to see if Tim Cook, Apple's chief operating officer, who is standing in for Steve Jobs, goes for it.

I bought an iPhone three weeks ago. It was no impulse buy: I had been pondering Apple's much-hyped mobile for some time, fully aware of its handful of significant faults.

But I went ahead, thinking that such a delight to use would soon prompt me to ignore its foibles.

How right I was. The iPhone is a delight to use. It's the first modern mobile phone I've had that is truly intuitive to use. But its strength is all the other functions – from internet browsing to email, from music player (iPod) to photo slide show. The screen is superb: we watched the hit BBC comedy Outnumbered on the BBC iPlayer on the iPhone last night and were wowed by the quality.

What about the foibles? The camera isn't as bad as I feared: in good light it takes nice photos. But it should be better than 2 megapixels. The lack of a flash is a real limitation but I can live with that.

Texting remains a challenge because of the tiny keypad, but I have got better at typing on the iPhone. I wouldn't want to write a long blog post on the device, though, which is a shame given its online strengths. And that is the joy of the iPhone. For the first time, I'm using the internet and email on my phone. The iPhone has made it a pleasure to check where a hotel or restaurant is via Safari – none of those tedious attempts to reach and use Google Maps on the Sony Ericsson K800i and the BlackBerry.

Nice phone, shame about the phone network…

So the iPhone has proved one of my better buys. I wish I could say the same about O2, the only mobile phone network that offers the device in Britain. Perhaps I was unlucky: a trainee in O2's High Wycombe store sold me the phone. But I had little idea how much havoc she would cause by getting my first name and surname the wrong way round on the O2 computer. When I phoned O2 customer services to point out the mistake, I was amazed to be told to fax my driving licence to them as proof of my true identity. The jobsworth told me that I had to go through this hassle to protect my own identity. After all, she claimed dubiously, Skinner Robert was an entirely plausible name.

Really? The fact that I bought the phone with a bank account in my correct name, and the credit check was in my real name, underlines the stupidity of this demand.

It gets worse. I got an email from someone called Heha Chawla from O2 telling me:

"I understand that you've faxed a letter and document for name change. However, we don't have any time scale when your name will be change on our system. "

So, O2 gets your name wrong, but has absolutely no idea when they might correct this howler. Meantime, their system has no record of you. Marvellous.

(Beside this triumph of customer service, O2's very patchy 3G coverage compared with Vodafone pales into insignificance!)

UPDATE, 24 November

It got worse still – and then better. I got a further email from O2 telling me that I shouldn't have been told to fax my driving licence, but had to post it. I replied I would write to Ronan Dunne, O2's UK chief executive if the company didn't take responsibility for the mistake and put it right without any action from me. I finally spoke to a helpful person called Jennifer Matthews who agreed it was O2's mistake and would put it right.

George Orwell would have identified with the Big Brother tendencies of Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system.

I switched on my laptop tonight, and wondered why everything was so slow. I popped out of the room and came back to find a message that Windows was going to restart in moments. Panicking – I did NOT want my computer to turn itself off – I clicked ‘postpone’. I then went to turn the kettle on, got distracted – and returned to a dark screen as the laptop restarted itself.

GRRRRR!

It turned out that Vista was installing updates – without asking me if I wanted them, or getting me to decide whether I wanted the laptop restarted.

I presume there’s a way of taking back control. But this kind of software rudeness does nothing to endear Microsoft to me. Now, where’s Apple’s website?

I was going to wish Ertblog readers a happy new year. But time went by, so I’ll simply offer best wishes for Twelth Night. Along with an image of the Christmas lights in our village of Chalfont St Giles in Buckinghamshire!

New Year’s Day marked Ertblog’s second birthday. I didn’t hold a party, but thought it would be fun to note some of the most popular posts in the first two years.

The most popular one asked what that blog phrase ‘hat tip’ meant.

Next, a debate about whether you should ask your prospective father-in-law whether you may marry his daughter. 

A personal reflection about the 25th anniversary of the Falklands war still features in Google’s top ten results about the 25th anniversary.

Maintaining the military theme, a post about Britain’s sole survivor of the Great War trenches, Harry Patch, proved popular.

Finally, the post that generated the most comment and (short term) traffic. In July 2007, I rejected Guardian columnist and director Emily Bell’s attack on what she saw as the BBC’s failure to maintain its impartiality. You can read that post and comments here.

Like many bloggers, I’ve found it hard to post regularly. As Karen and I are expecting a baby in July I don’t expect things to improve in 2008, but I’ll do my best!

I bought my first laptop last August: an HP Pavilion dv 9500. It came with Windows Vista, which appealed to the sense of the new. That said, I was reassured that Vista was reaching the computer equivalent of toddler-hood, which I assumed would have ensured that any glitches would have been sorted.

Not a bit of it. Three months ago, I’m still getting more crashes than under Windows XP. Tonight, copying 30 photos to CD, the system insisted it would take up to 41,000 days and 7 hours to achieve the task. The internet is available some days but not others. When will the IT industry achieve even pitiful standards of customer service? Or do they think they are immune from the need to meet the requirements of the Trade Descriptions Act?