Five years ago, it would have taken ten tanks of gas or more.

Ten years ago? Forget about it.

Now, even as the economy continues to show softness and spark fear in some quarters, the Technology Industry could stand to actually benefit from its long-standing pressure to continually lower prices and improve value and performance.

Much of this is the result of Moore's Law (as evidenced by today's pricing list published by Intel). But the industry itself has been on a continuous value curve for a generation, with everyone from component makers to printer makers to software makers under constant pressure to produce more, better for cheaper.

So even as the price of a gallon of gasoline has jumped by more than 33 percent in the past year, PCs are still priced the same in U.S. dollars. If energy prices stay this high, it's likely that at some point technology prices will show at least some bump. But don't count on it being much. Technology continues to be a relative steal.

Many upgraders are complaining that their phones have been "bricked," with little explanation from Apple during the upgrade walk-through process that a cranky and swamped iTunes store needed to be accessed before the upgrade could finish.

It was a maddening process for which Apple should have done a better job preparing customers. To make matters worse, reports are indicating that Apple Stores throughout the country had the same problem connecting to iTunes, couldn't quickly activate customers' new 3G iPhones, and caused equally maddening delays for those trying to upgrade their experience in person.

But there is good news: Once the upgrade is complete, your first generation iPhone is really a new device, with Exchange integration, an improved contacts folder and email management and, of course, the App Store that is the true transformative piece of the puzzle.

The upgrade succeeded here, after three hours of downloading, restoring, backing up and activation.

(Right after the upgrade finished here, we downloaded the free AOL Radio feature from the App Store and music quickly streamed from the AOL service, live, into the iPhone.)

Bottom line: if you think your iPhone is bricked, just give it time and, once you connect to the iTunes Store, you should be back on your way.

Next up: Taking a look at MobileMe and the Exchange integration itself. Both look intriguing but now we know that patience will be not just a virtue but a requirement.

The micro-blogging service Twitter was rife with comments from adopters whose update process timed out in the middle, or referred them to Apple's iTunes store to complete the update process only to find the store was overrun and the network could not be accessed.

A sampling of comments:

* "2.0 is a trainwreck for me. It won't sync to iTunes. Now my phone is bricked to to timeout."

* "iphone 2.0 i hate u. u bricked my phone."

* "having mucho problems updating my iphone to 2.0, after a crash, restore, then attempted update...appears to be completely bricked"

* "itunes music store failed in my 2.0 update. bricked my damn phone. waiting for it to come back up."

* "Nice. Apple's firmware update just bricked my phone."

* "so far - not good. iphone 2.0 upgrade couldnt complete, having to restore my iphone"

* "I fear I may have temporarily bricked my phone; no itunes store no update, apparently"

Here, in the Test Center lab, an iPhone upgrade to 2.0 software resulted in much the same: a 45-minute process of downloading the firmware and then watching as iTunes and the iPhone entered into a process of backing up, installing, backing up, restoring to factory defaults - - followed by a message advising to keep the iPhone plugged in while it accessed the iTunes Store. And then everything stopped and a message appeared: "We could not complete your iTunes Store request. The network connection timed out."

With more than six million iPhone holders set to upgrade today, Apple's servers may be a bit overtaxed.

But as of sunrise on the East Coast, Apple's much-awaited iPhone App Store went live via iTunes and it provides an interesting glimpse at the e-commerce that will be available on the platform. The App Store availability was publicized widely, first, by the site TechCrunch.

An initial look at what's available in the App Store shows a lineup that could provide some excitement for the iPhone community - - for both business and lifehacking purposes. There is, at long last, a native AIM instant messaging app, an application for the Web-based Pandora music service, Salesforce.com's Salesforce Mobile application; Major League Baseball's "At Bat" application, which will provide real-time scores and in-game video; and Evernote Lifestyle, by the makers of the new Web-based, note-taking and productivity application.

There are also downloads for Facebook, MySpace, an e-book reader and more.

At this end-point, though, the iPhone 2.0 software isn't yet available at the moment - - so placing those applications on the phone itself isn't yet possible.

But the array of new software for the iPhone will mean that both users of first-generation devices as well as those who turn on the 3G iPhones when they launch Friday will have a powerful, new set of tools at their disposal without having to hack it or jailbreak it. It also means that developers and executives at ISVs will arrive at the office this morning facing an entirely new world, with a demand more urgent than ever that they begin thinking of mobility and the Apple platform.

Members of the House Administration Committee are considering new rules that, opponents say, would rob representatives of their ability to use a growing number of Web 2.0 tools to communicate with constituents - - tools like the micro-blogging service Twitter and video-sharing site YouTube.

This particularly irks U.S. Rep. John Culberson, a Houston Republican, who lists more than 800 followers of his comments on Twitter - - some of which are written on the House floor itself. Culberson provided hour-by-hour updates Tuesday of the controversy on Twitter itself, and protested, "They want to require prior approval of all posts to any public social media/internet/www site by any member of Congress!!! Before I could post a Tweet I would have to get approval of the twits that run the House!"

He added, via Twitter, "The rule proposed by the Dems would require me to submit this Tweet to the House Franking Comm for prior approval before I cuold post it." (Posts to Twitter can be entered via the Web, via mobile device or via SMS Text messaging, making it a handy way to push out micro-blog items on a quick and continuous basis.)

His office also put out this statement on Culberson's official House of Representatives Web site, quoting Republican Minority Leader John Boehner as saying:

The Committee is considering the adoption of new rules that would require outside websites such as YouTube to comply with House regulations before Members of Congress could post videos on them. Under the proposal, the House Administration Committee would develop a list of "approved" websites, and Members of Congress could post content only such websites.

If the proposed rule is adopted, the free flow of information over the Internet between Americans and their representatives will be significantly curtailed.

Kyle Anderson, a spokesman for the committee, acknoweldged during a brief conversation that a proposal is under way to limit the use by congressmen of commercial web sites for communication, saying that "taxpayer money can't be used to support commercial web sites."

YouTube is owned by Google, and contains all manner of videos - - controversial to the mundane - - and it also sells advertising. Twitter, though, has become more of a service - - a sort of dial-tone for micro-blogging.

The House of Representatives Committee on House Administration is usually in charge of much more low-key issues, such as how many constituent mailings each representative can send, or how to maintain House constituent email services.