Motorola Disappointment
I picked up a new cell phone recently, a humble RAZR V3T. My old one broke just before a trip and there wasn't anything fancy that I wanted, so I picked up the RAZR because it's a flip phone and just seems to work well as a phone.
One of my criteria for buying a phone is that I can charge it through USB. I have a few devices that charge through USB now, and I have a car-to-miniUSB adapter that I can use to recharge these things in the van.
But the V3T mini-USB charging capability is apparently intentionally crippled by Motorola, so that you have to buy their "Phone Tools" software to enable charging through USB.
Plugging the phone into an XP machine that doesn't have the software installed causes the phone to not charge. Plugging the phone in to the my Powerbook causes it to charge for some reason.
The phone can apparently tell that you're not using Motorola's charger or a PC with the software installed and put up an "Unauthorized Charger" message.
This is ridiculous.