I used to think the same thing until I used the newer Apple glass trackpads. There is no comparison, really. And the gestures are nice feature and work well.

I really like the OS and the social network integration is second to none. While it's lacking in apps, many of the major ones are there, but it still needs more developer support if it wants to starting picking up market share. I'd also like to see prices come down. iOS has set a precedent for cheap apps (games from major players and specialized software not included) and Android has most of its users trained into refusing to pay for software at all.

The real deal killer in WP7 for me was the email client. Something as simple as an email with 5 images attached results in an excessive amount of taps. Where iOS and Android display them inline, WP7 takes a different approach in the name of "security".

Using the example of an email with 5 images attached, here's how you view them:

Tap "Show all attachments"
Tap each image to download them
Tap the thumbnail to view it full size
Tap back to go back to the body
Tap the next thumbnail, etc

Total number of taps to view all 5 images on WP7: 15
Total number of taps to view all 5 on iOS (and Android, I believe): 1 (images are displayed inline)

If you go "back" out of your message to the inbox, when you click on that same email, you have to "show all attachments" again (though you don't have to re-download your images)!

On html emails with images, you only have to tap the button to show all images.

...until the next day?

iCloud backups don't work that way, but local backups to your computer still work do. I rather like the restore from iCloud option, though I've only used it once just to see how it worked. Since my backups were to iCloud (nightly - when I plugged it in before bed), my application data was more up to date than my backups to iTunes were (the only one of great concern to me was CarCare to track car/motorcycle maintenance.) The night I did the iCloud restore, I kicked it off before bed and woke up to the phone just like it was before I had erased it.

They were a whole lot cheaper than the alternative. Luckily, I only had one machine (an iMac G5 that I acquired for free) that required such measures.

I had a similar experience with my 74 year-old grandmother. Though she's not disabled, I'd never seen her excited for any piece of technology. My mother showed her the iPad and her eyes lit up; she couldn't wait to get one. I drove them both down to the only place that had them in stock to buy one that very day, I couldn't believe it. That was almost exactly a year ago today and she still uses her iPad very frequently - I'd say more than half of her emails to my mother end in "Sent from my iPad." She's since replaced her Dell desktop with an iMac and was so excited when she did the upgrade to Lion on her own (she feared doing any sort of upgrade on her Dell); it was great to see her excited about technology and keeping more in touch with family outside of California.

I'm only interested if Natalie is involved in some way.

zapp
nibbler
kif
clamps
flexo

Complete with icons from Iconfactory

I switched from FoxIt to Sumatra on Windows after I ran into a PDF that wouldn't open in FoxIt.

What company did you go with and how do you like them? My employer is looking for a good 3rd party service provider.

People buy them because they can easily be grown (unlike a RAID5) and they're simple to set up and use. I bought mine because I got a great deal on it (compared to retail pricing), but people with more money than I don't have an issue with spending good money on something that works well and is easy to maintain. If I wouldn't have gotten such a good price, I would have built a low-power FreeNAS box with zfs pools.

I have a Drobo S that I bought less than a year ago. It's operated okay (and hasn't lost data), but sometimes hangs BIOS for an astronomically long time. It replaced a FreeNAS server that I built because the server was too loud and power-hungry. Unfortunately, the S doesn't have a network and is incompatible with the old DroboShare hardware piece, so you have to hang it off of a running system anyways (which is okay since I have a Windows 7 Media Center PC running 24/7.) No more than 6 months after the S came out, they offered the FS, which adds a network port directly to the Drobo. I wish I had known that their product cycle was so short (they've since upgraded the Drobo S, adding USB3.0), for I would have waited for the FS. They do offer a wonderful $50 (depending on age of your existing Drobo) discount to existing owners, but the cost of the Drobo compared to other, similar solutions (Synology comes to mind) is high.

As for software, the Drobo Dashboard is average at best, but the hardware has (so far) been reliable (knock on wood.)

I think they're referring to the security of your information, but go ahead and keep trolling. As a side benefit, yes, this would provide more oversight if a virus ever did successfully make it to the wild.

Also, a lot of people think this is something that's forced upon the user and is the only place to buy an application (which clearly isn't the case.) I think it's meant for the majority of the computer-using public that really has no idea that there are other options than going to a brick-and-mortar store for software.