I was going to say the same thing about the review and I assumed you must be new here but then I saw your user id.......never mind......carry on.

saying that I should be backing up my data, wipe the hard drive and do a complete install from scratch. For some people (like me) this may be cost-prohibitive.... I might only want to shell out for the Win7 upgrade and not the full retail install package. I've been very fortunate (and spoiled) because I've been using Linux and/or BSD for years which are much more fairly priced, if not free.

The only thing keeping me from getting a copy of Win 7 is cost. If I'm going to do the install it would be with Win 7 Professional at a minimum which I think is retailing for ~$140-$190 right now. That's a lot of scratch.

brilliant response. You, my friend, are a word-smith.

....but Ubuntu did not include the correct hardware recognition to set up the system. It also provides no easy method for me to report back those settings for others. If it was truly a manufacturer problem then I would still not be having sound.

That issue can be addressed by sending a copy of your dmesg output with the relevant messages to the developers. As a standard practice I would think the groups working on the distro would ask for that when shooting a trouble.

I've never seen a bigger piece of flamebait than this article. Stopped reading it half-way through cuz it's just LOADED with misinformation.

priceless....wish I had mod points for you

My word, I wish I had mod points for this. Brilliant.

This article is so one-sided it's not even funny:

Of course, Windows XP has shown that it handles netbooks with aplomb, and works with the web best of all, thanks to having all the browsers, plug-ins, downloads and more you could ever want, something you just canâ(TM)t claim with good old Linux.

He obviously has not used any Linux distro within the past 2-3 years. A plain vanilla install of Ubuntu, Fedora or even OpenSolaris can do all of that and then some. For free (as in beer).

There's a lot of truth to what you say. My father wants to buys a new system for his house but at least he knows not to go buy one without me there so he won't be sold something way more powerful than he needs. I shiver thinking about when I'll have to explain to him why he can't play a CD he bought legally, in his PC because of DRM. I still can't get him to write down how he's supposed to check his email.