Well in this day and age in which mobile OS's are severely crippled compared to PC ones and that is considered fine by the 99% of population it certainly doesn't surprise me that the new generation consoles are severely limited also.
On one hand I understand that for many regular folks their smartphone or tablet is now their main computing device, and for millions of people in less developed countries may be their first and only one. It makes sense then to make a OS easy to use and secure, but that doesn't mean it has to prevent us experienced computer users to do things like running software downloaded from arbitrary places or letting us manage our storage as we see fit.
iOS has always been a severely limited OS, Windows Phone it's a close cousin only with fewer applications, and Android, the one that was closest to a general purpose OS is being crippled by Google in the newer versions (e.g.: Removing the ability of writing to arbitrary locations on the EXTERNAL sd card in KitKat). A sad state of affairs :(

For the uses you mention, I agree with you that the typical 6 inch readers are garbage. But larger e-ink displays can be quite nice for that use case if the software is good enough.
I have a 9.7 inch e-ink reader by Onyx and the hardware is pretty good. In that screen size many books with diagrams look nice and you can see a nice amount of information at once. Alas, the Onyx software is passable but could be much better. I wouldn't recomend this particular model for a demanding professional, but as I said , with the right software this kind of technology can be very nice. Have a look at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... Imagine the software of the device shown in the beggining with the screen shown at about 2:35.

Not a finished product. But this http://youtu.be/ldvk_jAGjQI?t=... shows that there are other companies trying to make things with large e-ink screens.
I'm not sure about screens so large but I have a 9.7 inch e-ink reader and I love it.

I bet they'll switch Windows to a subscription model like they've done with Office. I know you can still buy copies of Office in the traditional manner and run them for as long as you want buy they're pushing people to the subscription option.
Like Adobe, it seems it's the only idea they have for solving the "good enough, why change?" problem (for them) of mature software.

I think that kind of thing belongs more in Google+. Anyway they should offer an option to remove that from the Youtube comments

The comments might be better, but who the hell thought it was a good idea to add the Google+ shares in the comments? It ads nothing but pollution

It might be the Android most people want but they could also allow to uninstall Google apps that you don't use (for example Google+ which I ocasionally use but most people don't even know what it is).
I understand that one of the ways Android phones make Google money is by enticing you to use more of their services but I wish they'd allow to uninstall their apps even if there was some kind of penalty for it (paying some money maybe?)

This is sad for me since I've been browsing the release lists there for years. From time to time I'd take a look in there and sometimes would find interesting projects that I wouldn't have found other way.
Are there any comparable websites? (Listing releases of open source projects)

...is consistently faster than our wired home connections.
It all sounds a little weird to me: Isn't a dedicated cable always much more reliable and capable than a wireless connection? That's what I thought at least.
I guess it's cheaper to deploy antennas every few hundred meters than to wire every home

They're coming: http://blog.the-ebook-reader.c... I have their previous model, the M92 and its 9'7 inch screen is great for reading dense content (PDF, technical books...). The only "problem" is that's only an e-reader and you can't install apps. All of that will be solved when the m96 is released.

I know it's not the main topic of your comment but don' count on ReactOS ever being "finished" or even running most Windows programs.
Making a Windows clone is a HUGE task and it requires pretty competent programmers too. ReactOS doesn't seem to have hundreds of people working on it.

That last line of yours also worries me a lot.
It's really bad since they're now in politician mode: On the 29 release they're saying that's now "more customizable" while they've actually removed some options.
I just hope they've some sense left and stop following all Chrome's stupid decisions

but I don't like the new redesign.
The de-emphasis of the non-active tabs makes them a bit too hard to see. They are translucent on my Windows 7 machine and it makes them hard to see.
Also, they claim is more customizable than ever and yet the "bookmark this page" (the star) and "show bookmark list" buttons cannot be separated ...
I guess I'll get used to it, but big changes to the UI piss me off incredibly.