I had one of the very first Archimedes boxes, back before it even had a proper operating system (it had a monitor called 'Arthur', which was really very primitive). But it was a really good feeling sitting in my university bedroom with a computer which in terms of raw processing power was faster than the two fastest machines the university then owned put together. Those original ARM boxes were, by the standards of their time,very remarkable: much faster than contemporary DEC VAX, Motorolla 68000, or Intel 80286 machines. The DEC Alphas which came along at about the same time were faster, but they were also hugely more expensive!

If you give regular lectures or presentations as part of your life - and many of us do - something like this will probably pay for the whole kit fairly quickly. The ability to give presentations without fumbling with notes, the ability to walk around while talking and not be stuck behind a lectern, the ability to change slides with perhaps just a subtle nod of the head, make for very much more fluid and effective communication.

If I was still teaching regularly, I would buy one.

When I use the internet from home, my little dish lights up the satellite so effectively that not only can the satellite distinguish it from all the other radio frequency clutter emanating from northern Europe, I can push 6Mb/s up the link. Yes, I know you city folk think that's absurdly slow, but I find it mind boggling. What's even more mind-boggling is that it only eats 38 watts to do that. Of course if everyone was trying to light up the satellite at the same time it almost certainly wouldn't be able to discriminate all the different signals, but even so comms satellites are awesome technology.

The problem is that the legal limit is (in the UK at least) 60 watts. As there lasers will emit many more lumens per watt than the incandescent bulbs in use when the law was written, this doesn't stop them being much too bright.

Do they also detect pedestrians and cyclists?

Strongly agree. The problem is (in the UK at least) the limit to legal brightness is set in watts; it needs to be set in lumens.

Riding a bike is ridiculously easy, and most ten year olds can do it; but if you do it well enough to win the Tour de France you make a lot of money.

People who dedicate themselves by long practice and careful study to any skill - even a 'ridiculously easy' one - become good at it, and if it's a valued skill, the good people are more valued. It remains a fact that the average ten year old can easily write programs which will give them enough positive feedback and sense of mastery that, with encouragement, they may put in the practice and study which will one day make them well compensated.

And let's face it, a lot more people make a lot of money from writing code than from riding bicycles.

Well, give a shit. The only thing, in a globalised world, which keeps America and Europe richer than Asia and Africa, is that up until recently we've been better educated and technically more competent. That's no longer true. If you want your country to be rich enough to pay your pension in your old age, we've got to stay better educated - at least in the technical and engineering areas which increasingly drive the world economy.

...Keen to try new stuff, eager to experiment. Now it's all newbie wannabes who want something reliable, safe and unchanging.

In that case I think you're being short sighted and parochial. A great deal of Snowden's revelations concern the interception of world-wide communications data in order for the Western powers (chiefly the US and the UK) to prosecute illegal wars and carry out extra-judicial killings (murder, in every day terms) across the world. These actions will certainly provoke the next generation of terrorist outrages, and are probably intended to provoke the next generation of terrorist outrages - because unless there are enough terrorist outrages the security state will get its budget slashed.

The security state and the terrorists are symbiotic: they feed off each other. It's no accident that Osama bin Laden received his initial training and support from mujahideen who were financed by the CIA.

More usefully, tracking eye movement could be used to control the camera. Tilting and panning to bring anything the user concentrates on to the centre of screen would be useful in a lot of games, and would get around the poor camera placement algorithms we've all been annoyed by.

It would have not to be too sensitive - the user glancing at a status display or an incoming message should not move the camera - but I could imagine this being really useful.

If you're buying a laptop for anyone competent, they won't be running Windows on it (or if the do, it's their problem). If you're buying a laptop for anyone incompetent, they shouldn't be running Windows on it. Patching a hopelessly insecure operating system with anti-virus and other bloatware is so twentieth century. Chrome OS is a far better solution for non-technical users.

I wouldn't do any financial transaction from a Windows box, not even buy a book off Amazon. Too many friends have had trouble that way.

Read Neal Stephenson's In the beginning was the Command Line, or, better yet, give it as a set book to the students. It's available for download from his website for free, or you can buy it as a paperback from all good booksellers (and some bad ones)

The OP does not say that he is a 'raving psychopath'. He says that he has schizophrenia, like two million other people in the United States. It's an unpleasant condition for the sufferer, but one that a lot of people manage to live perfectly well with.