TL;DR: I have a supposedly impossibly unlocked iPhone 4S in my hand. Two of them, in fact. Here’s how to get one:

• Go to your local Apple Store.
• Ask the sales associate for the iPhone 4S model of your choice for AT&T.
• Tell them you already have a line of service, and that you’d like to pay the full retail price.
• They will be happy to sell you an “off contract” phone at full retail price.
• Remove the pre-installed AT&T SIM, and install the SIM of your choice.
• Launch iTunes on your computer.
• Power up the phone and plug it into your computer via the USB cable.
• The phone will activate, and you will see a confirmation message:

That’s about all there is to it.

The longer version:

When the iPhone 4S was announced, one of the first questions I asked Apple’s online sales team was whether or not the phone would be available in unlocked, contract-free form. Yes, I’m aware that they cost much more money up front, but I prefer an unlocked iPhone for a number of reasons:

• My employer pays for my wireless service, but they will not pay for an early upgrade.
• I travel regularly to visit family and friends in Europe, and I always use a local or roaming SIM. (There’s no way I’d pay $4.99/min and $19.97/MB using AT&T’s roaming service. I can get 500 minutes and 1GB data for a whopping $6.45 using a local carrier.)
• I have a general preference against any long-term financial commitment. (Exception: my wife.)
• The factory unlocked models retain their resale value much, much better than their carrier-locked counterparts.

On pre-launch day, however, I was disappointed to see that Apple wasn’t allowing orders of these phones until November:

Sigh. This makes sense; after all, Apple’s carrier partners want to drive the supply of the new phones into the hands of long-term American subscribers instead of the ravenous exporters of unlocked iPhones.

I will be visiting family and friends in Europe at the end of October, and I really wanted to take advantage of the new phone’s better camera for pictures and video. Not a big deal, and certainly not a big enough deal to pay the premium prices being asked by the folks over the border in Canda. Nor did I feel like making the 12-hour round-trip drive to Montreal like last time.

Then, I stumbled across a couple reports from MacRumors and 9to5mac. Unlocked iPhones masquerading as AT&T phones? Could it be so?

Of course it’s possible! I am currently using an “AT&T model” (MC319LL/A) iPhone 4 that was factory unlocked by Apple when received as a replacement for an originally unlocked iPhone 4 I purchased up in Canada. Here’s a screenshot from said iPhone 4, showing T-Mobile service on iOS 5 here in the USA:

(By the way, I don’t use T-Mobile. I just keep a few T-Mobile and International SIMs around for ensuring that phones are unlocked prior to my travels.)

Yesterday afternoon, I packed up my MacBook Air, USB cable, a T-Mobile SIM, and headed out. The sales associate had no problems selling me exactly what I asked for: an AT&T iPhone 4S for use with an existing line of service at full retail price.

Yes, AT&T. Do not ask for an unlocked iPhone 4S, because they’re technically not allowed to sell you one until November. Yes, they’re all the same phone hardware underneath the covers, but the Apple Stores stock different models depending on which SIM is pre-installed (i.e. AT&T, Vodaphone for Verizon Wireless, etc.).

Once you’ve signed your hard-earned cash away to Apple, you’ll notice that the receipt will say, “AT&T Account Information No Wireless Service Activation during iPhone Sale”.

I unboxed the phones right there in the store, replaced the pre-installed SIM card with my own, plugged the phone into my laptop, launched iTunes, and got the familiar “Congratulations, your iPhone has been unlocked” message.

Depending on which carrier’s SIM card you use, you may also receive an Error 1630, which simply means that the phone was unable to automatically configure the APN information for data access. You’ll probably want to visit help.benm.at or unlockit.co.nz.

I tested both phones with both AT&T and T-Mobile SIM cards, and both worked as expected. (T-Mobile is still EDGE-only.)  Here’s a screenshot from the new iPhone 4S, also showing T-Mobile service on iOS 5 here in the USA:

For what it’s worth, I am not worried about Apple locking these phones at a later date. They have been selling unlocked AT&T iPhone 4 models for the last many months, and I’ve had no problems to date.

I hope this information is helpful to others.

I recently purchased a Lenovo B575 laptop on sale at Best Buy for a visiting family member. They needed a basic Windows laptop, and this relatively new model from Lenovo met the need at the excellent price point of $299. While not on par with the performance and features of the high-end MacBooks and ThinkPads I use personally, it’s still a rugged, power-efficient laptop backed by excellent Lenovo support.

The standard Lenovo “out of the box” system image is surprisingly devoid of software bloat, other than the single McAfee antivirus trial and a few utilities from Cyberlink for burning CDs/DVDs. Not that it matters, since my first action was to completely wipe the system. (Actually, my first action was the burn the two system recovery DVDs, in case I ever need to restore the system to its factory default state.) Putting aside my personal propensity for performing clean installs of an OS on all retail, non-Apple workstations, a new installation was required in this case to install the Russian-language version of Windows.

Here’s where the fun began. Alas, there are many reports of problems with this system after a clean installation of Windows 7, namely the fact that you won’t be able to connect to wireless network. While I experienced the same issues, I was able to get around them.

Update: Lenovo uses two different wireless cards in the B575, and these instructions are valid for those using the Ralink card. Alternatively, you may have an Atheros card, for which you may obtain the drivers here.

Here is the procedure I used:

• Wipe the existing partitions, including the hidden Lenovo system partition used for OneTouch recovery.
• Perform a clean installation of your favorite version of Windows 7 64-bit.
• Each time you boot the computer, press F12 to view the boot menu, and select the appropriate boot device.
• Download all of the relevant drivers from Lenovo’s website on another computer, copy to a flash drive, and install:
  
• Once the Ethernet driver is installed, connect to the Internet and download and install all available Windows Updates.
• Verify that the physical wireless switch on the front of the laptop is enabled.
• After the drivers and Lenovo Power Management are installed, press Fn-F5 to verify that the software power settings are enabled:
  

For reference, here is a screenshot of my device manager and installed driver versions:

Here are some other miscellaneous notes that may be helpful:

• I experimented with the boot order, and booting from “Windows Boot Manager” and/or the hard drive directly had no effect on the operation of the wireless card. What did have an effect, however, is whether or not the system boots automatically or manually. If I allow the system to boot automatically, no wireless. If I manually select either “Windows Boot Manager” or the hard drive, wireless works.
• If the system hangs when rebooting to install drivers and/or Windows updates, power cycle and continue the process.
• I am using the Lenovo-provided Ralink wireless driver. The Atheros drivers proposed on a number of online forums did not work. I downloaded versions from Lenovo, Acer or atheros.cz.

Do you like living on the edge? Is “Danger” your middle name? Is the bleeding edge the only real estate that piques your interest? If so, then Google’s Chrome Canary is for you. Running this web browser is so incredibly risky that even the supreme geeks at Google are trembling at the prospect of you using it. So much so, in fact, that Google won’t allow you to set it as your default browser:

Ha! Try as they might, but we’ll not surrender without a fight! Here’s the trick to setting the Canary as your default browser:

• Launch Safari
• Apple -> Preferences
• General -> Default Web Browser
• Select “Chrome Canary” from the drop-down menu

If for nothing else, at least install Chrome Canary for its superior icon. Now, go on and sic’ that there yeller-bellied canary on a  bunch of rabid Chaos Monkeys!