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T-Mobile subscribers can now pick up a Samsung Galaxy S2 smartphone through Wal-Mart with no annual contract required.

To grab that deal, you buy the Galaxy S2 for $299 and then pair it with a T-Mobile Monthly4G plan for a minimum of $30 per month. The Monthly4G plan offers unlimited Internet access with the first 5GB of data at 4G speeds, unlimited text, and 100 minutes of talk time with a charge of 10 cents per minute beyond the first 100 minutes.

But with no annual commitment, customers are free to cancel at any time.

Wal-Mart is also selling the … Read more

T-Mobile USA continues to bleed its most valuable customers as the carrier struggles to keep up with its fellow national rivals.

The carrier, a unit of Deutsche Telekom, said today it lost 205,000 net customers in the second quarter, largely due to a defection in customers with long-term contracts.

T-Mobile posted a second-quarter profit of $207 million, down slightly from $212 million a year ago. Revenue fell 3.3 percent to $4.88 billion.

The company's subscriber results look a lot like Sprint Nextel's struggles with customer growth over the past few years, with staggering losses on … Read more

T-Mobile USA isn't a prepaid carrier, but it might as well be.

While the company's base of contract subscribers -- still a majority of its business and greatest source of revenue -- has been shrinking over the past few quarters, its prepaid business continues to sign up new customers.

In fact, it's been one of the rare bright spots at a carrier that is struggling to get back on its feet after a failed takeover attempt by AT&T. With higher-end customers looking to the other national carriers for better phones (read: iPhone) or 4G LTE … Read more

Nordstrom The Catalogs lets you view recent featured items from the store's catalogs. Though you won't get the full Nordstrom inventory, the thrust of this app seems to be giving you the catalog page-flipping experience on your iPad.

Upon launch, you're presented with the most recent issue on the upper half of the screen and previous issues you can scroll through at the bottom. Once a catalog is selected, you can simply swipe to the left or right to turn the pages. Touch a page to get all the listings on that page, and touch a listing … Read more

Cash-strapped wireless subscribers can now get unlimited everything smartphone service for less than $20 a month. So what's the catch? And is it really worth it?

That's the question I help answer for one reader in this edition of Ask Maggie. Indeed, Republic Wireless's $19 a month plan requires customers use Wi-Fi wherever they can. While this may be a good fit for some wireless customers, it's not for others.

The same is true of other prepaid services. While the advertisements may make some prepaid services seem cheaper than services from bigger nationwide rivals, consumers need … Read more

iBank is a full-featured financial management app that can help you track bank and credit card accounts, keep an eye on your investment portfolio, generate a variety of reports, and help with budgeting and planning.

iBank's interface has a very Mac-like feel: a toolbar sits over two panes, one for sources on the left and one for a transaction register on the right. Unlike the previous version of iBank, transaction editing happens right in the register view, with drop-down tools for categories, splits, and memos, and you can perform calculations when entering amounts. The right pane is also where … Read more

TimeTable is a low-cost tool that works with iCal to help you track your hours, so you know exactly how much time you've spent on particular tasks--which can be especially handy for consultants and anyone else who tracks their time for billing purposes.

TimeTable has a simple, multipane interface that plugs right into your iCal data: You see your iCal calendars on the left, which you can select or deselect, and a list of events with date, duration, and title on the right (and you can add a dozen different columns in all, including notes and start and end … Read more

Quicken Essentials offers numerous useful tools to track your finances on the Mac, but it falls short by leaving out some important features found in Windows versions. The interface has been rebuilt from the ground up to make Mac users feel at home by following the design and navigation schemes of other Mac programs like iTunes. All of your accounts, transactions, credit cards, reports, and program tools are easily accessible from the left sidebar (what they call the Source List), showing all the information for each in the main register window. Like iTunes, you can click and drag to expand … Read more

It's hard enough to make a go of a restaurant by emphasizing things like food, service, and sanitation. Where too many good restaurants fail is not in the kitchen or the dining room but in the office, where costs, inventory, and profit and loss are often left to fend for themselves. Restaurateurs who want to succeed need to pay as close attention to their bottom line as they do their menus. Spreadsheet123's Restaurant Monthly Profit and Loss Statement Template for Excel RPLT 1 isn't too long a title for such a helpful tool. It contains five Excel … Read more