I go back to Postres every now and then, but find that some module that I want to install only provides code for MySQL, and I end up having to go back. Most of the major modules will support either, but I've found a lot of "it'd be cool to have that" modules don't. YMMV.

I'm accounting the tablet in the personal computers and the stuff it prints off in the imaging and printing. I think it's fair to say those items fit into the respective categories.

HP isn't trying to influence business printing, regardless of it being at the office or home office. Businesses are going to print stuff. Just because the printing happens from your home doesn't mean it's "home" printing.

They're trying to get Mom to print off her recipe rather than writing it down on a piece of paper. Or get her to send those photos Jimmy just e-mailed from college to her local printer rather than the local Walgreens. And similarly if I can send my grandma a tablet and printer at the same time, with the possibility of them already being configured to work together out of the box, they have a better chance of getting my business than the Samsung folk.

I agree it's a stereotype, and while it may not be "fact", it certainly is far from fiction. HP wants to continue selling their unicorn-blood-laced-ink to the masses, and convert all those that switched to Epson, Canon, or Brother back to them with a better selling point: the integrated platform. You and I aren't their target market with this.

Using the article you cited, I have highlighted the relevant items:
-- Personal systems (personal computers): $35.3 billion (31 percent of total revenue)
-- Services: $34.7 billion (30 percent)
-- Imaging and printing: $24 billion (21 percent)
-- Storage and servers: $15.4 billion (13 percent)
-- Software: $3.6 billion (3 percent)
-- Financial services: $2.7 billion (2 percent)
-- Total: $116 billion

By selling the tablet, we include the Personal sytems stats in addition to the Imaging and printing. Those two together are 52%, and look a little more like a lion's share. It's not the whole business, but it is enough to maintain and pursue new ways to bring money in for these. And for my $.02, my wife is the only one that uses our printer at home. The recipes I use come from my iPhone or media center. Airline tickets for myself are printed by the service agent at the airport. I can't think of an instance in the last two years where I printed out something of my own volition. I can, however, recount the times I drove to the store at 11PM because my wife had to print something for the next day and the printer was out of cyan. For more on that topic, I refer you to the Oatmeal

My primary searches come from the right-hand corner search bar. But when I tweak those searches, I'd rather go to the box in the middle of the screen than the top right. As a side note, I have disabled that damn annoying instant search. Maybe it would work if it was on a timer that changed every 10 seconds or so rather than every character I type. All it does is add noise to the search.

If you found a codec pack that works, that's half the battle. I just install those two immediately when building and I've never had an issue playing anything. And I agree about the music part of XBMC lacking. I found boxee and MediaPortal were much better, but we hardly use ours for music. Our stuff is mostly ripped TV shows and Movies, and use the iPhone app for remotes as well.

I don't get the part about the glass- my IR receiver is about the size of a 3.5mm jack, and the Gyration remote is RF, so there is nothing showing for that in front of the TV.

And all three are much better at picking up the metadata (actors, DVD covers, synopsis, etc.) than WMC, IMO. I'm currently helping a friend move his stuff to XBMC because of all the xml files and thumbs he has to keep for the metadata to show up in his WMC install. Maybe they've improved it for Win7, but I've found the XP and Vista ones just horrible for any large movie and TV show collection.

It sounds like you spent too much time on researching the ripping and not enough researching the media center softwares. I found MS's Media Center to be boorish at best, often forcing me to use third party media managers for pulling movie and TV show information.

If you're sticking with Windows, MediaPortal has a great community (especially for skins) and installing both ffdshow and haali media splitter will cover all codecs needed. MediaPortal also has great support for DVR functions and works with most DVB cards (even my old ATI All-In-Wonder Pro from '97). When I was running it, I found the tv-over-ethernet stuff very useful when I used the DVB cards (one computer with tv tuners that shares to all media centers), and would definitely use it again if we decide to get cable or satellite.

These days I'm using XBMC due to the lack of interest for DVR functionality. main room running Linux Mint and the bedrooms running XP. I particularly enjoy the built-in media manager and extreme ease of setup. If you have media on different machines, you can add them all to one folder similarly to how Win7 uses the libraries feature (But better. Much, much better). There's also a quality iPhone app that you can use to browse media, use as a remote, etc. I use that in addition to the webpage and IR remotes so I never have to be too far away from the remote. This is a key feature when dealing with children under the age of 5.

I did try Boxee for a stint, but it seemed to be too internet-focused and took an unacceptable amount of time to display local files through the Movies or TV show displays. I thought it did a great job of displaying and playing the online content, but when the primary source is local media and all pertinent bug reports get set to "will not fix", I'll pass. The $199 boxee box is tempting, but only if I can run XBMC on it instead.

If you don't have kids, I recommend the Gyration media center remotes. They do all that a universal remote does in addition to being used as a mouse/keyboard/media remote for the computer. If you do have kids, go with an older Phillips MCE remote. The older IR receivers work with XP, Vista, Win7, and Linux, whereas the newer ones only do Vista, Win7, and Linux. Not a huge deal if you have new equipment, but if you want to use older equipment that can make a difference.

I tend to agree. On my wife's XP machine, Opera loads just as fast as Firefox, but loses out in the long run because the page is sitting on 22/23 items loaded and has yet to display anything. Firefox, on the other hand, displays everything as fast as it can, even though the progress bar at the bottom shows there is plenty more to be loaded. Technically they load almost equally, but I'd rather stare at a page being loaded/rendered than a blank white page.

He sat there for a whole hour and you can't give us one example? I smell troll.

Well, you can, but they charge you a "line fee" equal to the price of limited basic TV or basic telephone service.

False. Maybe that was true in 2003, but I currently have dry loop (or naked, if you prefer) DSL. $30 for 3Mbit, $40 for 6Mbit (a little pricey, but 10Mbit cable starts at $60), and no "line charge" or telephone-equivalent fee. And it's from the evil AT&T no less. Call 'em up, and as a bonus, try to get them to say "naked DSL" on the call.

MicroGoogle(TM) Content Search Services 8th series 5th Edition SP1

I made it to about minute 45 before I couldn't take anymore. If a movie can't get *somewhere* in 45 minutes, it's really just bad.

There wasn't enough dialog for MST3K to work with. GP was right- it's just a long, boring staring contest. How this crap is even popular is beyond me. My wife's friend swore up and down that I need to read the books... no thanks. That's why I want to watch the movie- reading the book series for a couple weeks appeals even less than sitting through a 2hr+ movie.

On XKCD suck scale ( http://xkcd.com/653/ ), it's somewhere around the Star Wars Holiday Special. But less entertaining.

I echo your sentiment. My wife has recently gone back to school (she already has a 4 year degree in "business") to pursue a different career path. She continually comes home from class lamenting at the youth in her class that just don't get it. Not understanding the material is one thing, but not even trying to understand the material and then coming into class at the end of the semester asking for extra credit options is common in her new degree path of Early Childhood Development. In her opinion, they would be better off going and getting a job than wasting everybody's time since they are obviously not there to learn.

When the person who does the assignments, understands the material, and does pretty good on the tests pulls a 105+% in the class, something is wrong.

...or the caching mechanism is broken.

I'm inclined to think it's this, at least for my Vista machine. I currently have 6GB RAM, but at any given time with Outlook, FireFox, and a handful of Explorer windows open there isn't any more than 2-3GB showing to be in use. The rest is cached. This becomes a problem only when I need to fire up a 2GB Linux VM for testing, the VM will pause itself on startup, citing not enough RAM available. I'm no expert, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the caching mechanism is the culprit.

I found that part of the interface lacking, and still make accidental calls instead of sending a text when viewing a contact. However, the extra features are much, much better than any WinMo* phone I've had or the BlackBerry Tour I used for ~3 months. (I carried multiple phones on multiple networks for a while)

With the BB, it doesn't matter which option is shown to be highlighted, one roll of the trackball and you're nowhere near where you wanted to go. And web browsing on that thing? I laughed heartily at Verizon's "browse the best internet" commercials that featured the Tour. EVERY page starting zoomed out and showing a magnifying glass to zoom in, unless you happed to scroll over a link (nevermind that you couldn't see or read what you were accidentally clicking on). Google maps was alright to work with, even though the thing didn't have built-in GPS and missed the marker 75% of the time.

Browsing on the WinMo phones was feasible, but only if you didn't care what the page looked like. Opera Mobile helped a little, but the movement was still way to clunky to be worthwhile. Apple's double-tap zoom to the section is quite possibly the best way to zoom on a phone. In addition, not one of the WinMo phones would be responsive if they were synchronized less than 30 minutes apart. E-mail on the iPhone vs. any WinMo phones is not even a comparison. Apple got it right.

The things Apple got wrong are the things that are fixed by jailbreaking the phone (and I don't mean for free apps). BossPrefs (slide across the top for bluetooth/wifi/location toggles), custom sliders, backgrounds, themes, tethering, battery percentage, and hiding programs that aren't used a lot (e.g. the stock ticker, calculator, etc.). IMO, the iPhone is only worth it if you jailbreak. Otherwise it's just a limited phone with some cool apps.

I've yet to try an Android, but since the re-addition of the multi-touch, it may be a device worth checking out. I love Apple's screen keyboard, but sometimes I miss the sliding one from the Tilt and Mogul.

*My WinMo phones include the Samsung Blackjack & Blackjack II, AT&T Tilt, Sprint Mogul, and Palm Treo 700wx

Yeah, but what about deep-fried? Throw some ranch on the side and we won't even taste the squid!