$35,000 was a decent Salary in 1980.
Lets inflate that 2% per year over 34 years. ( x 1.96)

Merely adjusted for inflation, that should be:
~$59,000 (from $30,000) to ~$69,000 (from $35,000)

$5/hr was also the median minimum wage for student-like jobs in 1980-85 (~10,500/yr). Over three decades later most States don't even have a minimum wage at $10 or above.

Excellent. Now all the social-media pokes and teddy-bears can have collectible value.

That's one of the prime reasons I don't bother with most FPS-like games. Movement/directional schemes are almost exclusively tied to your mouse report rate. Many of the Action/RPG's have similar movement schemes as well, unfortunately.

I thought Nginx was created by Igor Sysoev?

If the Ribbons in MS's various products were even remotely configurable/customizable, they wouldn't nearly be such an atrocity to me at least (maybe others?).

MS has almost always had customizable toolbars, floaty-undockable, multiple toolbars and drop down menu's that hide unused features.

Vs. the Ribbons: Hide/Display and can't change.

If you try and make a custom Ribbon, you can't accomplish the same layout due to placement and sizing restrictions.

Performing an action via Toolbar or Drop-Down menu, doesn't change your menus or interface. Whereas the Ribbon requires - changing to a "specialty" ribbon, finding said function on the ribbon, clicking, changing back to "Home".

Conceptually the ribbon is good, but when it's implementation comes with the complete removal of previous functionality it completely goes against the flexibility that we've become accustomed to over the years, and feels like a slap in the face.

I wish I could still use Opera 12.x - I've run into far too many JavaScript problems. Go to any sitepoint article that has "disqus" comments, each Opera (sitepoint) tab will consume 12-20% of the CPU; other sites are worse than that.

Opera would of been much better off either replacing their JS engine, or Hooking up with FF to bring out a browser that is stable with lots of tabs, and still has a usable (non-lagged UI). FF is getting their with the multi-process Nightly.

I think if Mozilla would stop pulling options out of the browser, and leave the infrastructure in place (Add-On Bar, Status Bar options) without forcing users to recover removed features via Extensions they could very well be on track to be the best browser: both in terms of Stability (with heavy tab usage) and customization --- the new "Customize" option is a page out of Opera's playbook, and its pretty damned cool.

Best Response. Funny and Insightful.

I think if I could of gotten drivers for my last PC upgrade, I might still be running Win2k. Windows 2000 was a Rock-Stable OS that I used from 2004-2010/2011. It didn't take that long to acclimate to Windows 7, so it was a worthy upgrade. Win8 is "ok", I really hate the control it has removed from the user - in so many small ways, along with hiding things - just to make it difficult.
e.g. After applying Win 8.1 update, you have to bounce around until you realize it *IS* possible to login without a fucking MSN/Hotmail/Live/whateverthehell login.
Or when you try to download and run an installer from IE... blocked outright, until you realize clicking on "details" will allow you a button to override that block.

Another poster mentioned discoverability and how Win8 basically shits all over that concept. On that I totally agree. Some things are just a complete pain in the ass.

Windows 8 would be fine if the Start Screen was moderately customizable. Even Windows 7's Start Menu was degraded - you could no longer custom-arrange folders, like you could in pretty much every other MS OS.

The Start Screen - if it allowed SubFolders - when clicked open's a blank Start Screen that you could organize. Assign a hotkey to said SubFolder. Instead we have a single Start Screen, and horizontal scrolling bullshit.

Even Stardock's Fences allows for multiple "desktops" as such - although that too doesn't allow you to organize your Fenced icons at all, making it nearly useless. Along with it's "pin a folder view to the desktop, which sounded really awesome... except it's just a crippled directory view with - yep - no sorting option or any of explorer's Menu's/or toolbars.

I've been testing out ReviverSoft's Start Menu Reviver 2. It's decent, but lacks in a few key areas:

No "normal" right-click context menu on the replaced start-button - which normally shows most of the utilities/tools that a power-user would need to access.

No way to customize where it appears; with a TaskBar on the left, it appears to the right. If one could make it appear on top of the TaskBar, and change the left-column buttons, it would allow for two clicks - without moving the mouse to still open the Start Screen --- instead click the replaced start button, move the mouse to find the Start Screen "button" - if yer actually trying to get to the start screen, instead of Reviver's start menu. Or even allow assigning Shift+Win to display the Start Screen.

Other than that, I think it's probably better than Stardock's Start8 or even "classic-shell" which has far too many quirks.

November last year, I got a HP 17" (non-touch), AMD A8-5550M, 8GB Ram, 640GB HD, with Windows 8, for $450. Granted the touchpad mostly sucks, and the keyboard layout is non-optimal even with the NumPad. But it was $450. I just use an external keyboard sometimes, and mouse.

If the 14" even has a SSD - and not just basic flash-ram, a 64GB SSD should be about equivalent with a 500-650GB HD. A touch screen tends to add nearly a $100 to a laptop... but with only 2GB of ram, and a standard dimension screen, I don't see how that can be worth much more than $250-$300.

Monitors are a dead end. Real 3D or "natural resolutions" will come from hologram-like tech. Of course unlikely most of us will live to see that advance.

Opera did this - maybe still does - who knows only the sheep and clueless haven't abandoned that sinking ship. Wasn't a big deal, it was just a handful of bookmarks, and ~9 Speed Dial items, that most "geeks" replaced. They should of just gone forward with it, bring in some extra non-google sponsored-directly revenue, and let people change the defaults from a clean install as they wish.

I used textbooks.com a few years back. Prices were 1/2 to 1/4 the MSRP on used, and you would get something like 50%+ back for a new book if you returned it at the end of the semester. Amazon used books is also decent. And you need to keep an eye out for the school's own book drive --- usually run by the student council - for good deals on next semesters books.

Yes! And get rid of the import-restriction on sugar while they're at it.

What they should do. Is just make windows WORK like every other version in recent memory.
--- The visual appearance/display/theme/skin/whatever should be customizable. Give users the option of the contextual-free flat pastel shit that is Windows 8 Modern, or Win 7 Aero, or WinXP/2K Classic Mode or whatever.

If MS can fix that for Windows 9; actually clean some of the legacy cruft out, things might not be so bad.

I mean can you imagine if the "Uninstall Dialog" actually showed you PROGRAMS you installed... instead of Programs, pre-loaded-bloatware, MS Hotfixes, and "Platforms (.NET, etc)."