[asuh]

Thanks for the thorough and frustrating replies! Now I understand what's going on and why my options are limited in fixing this problem.

Yeah, I'm not an electrical engineer nor am I ambitious enough to take my phone apart to make it work without the battery, so no worries.

I guess my biggest frustration is how older PPCs can easily run lots of software and/or tether with computers easily for hours and then, suddenly, this new design is causing everyone a lot of problems. That also probably shows my lack of understanding how this phone is superior to these older yet similar phones.