You're assuming that they are paying the extended support, rather than undertaking other efforts to harden those purpose-specific machines.

Oh really?

For your Eee PC, here's 120GB mSATA drives for $75. No, it isn't 1TB, but that's not what the Eee was about. If you need that capacity, don't buy a netbook.

Right click on the desktop, choose Personalize. Select the "Windows Classic" theme.

Now it looks like XP.

Believe it or not, capacity still matters.

You're mostly right here. The thing with Apple being about integration and design, is that they are really good at it. A lot of people like to crack on them as not "innovating" or whatever, but when it really comes down to it, the people crying about innovation are much worse at what Apple does, and like to wait until Apple figured out how to make it and market it, and then repeat it without spending all the R&D cash. The PC industry has been doing it for decades.

If it's so easy to integrate and design a product, then why is history so replete with absolutely fucking terrible devices, and implementations of "obvious" technology? If Apple doesn't bring any innovation to the table, then why aren't these supposedly innovative companies eating Apple's lunch?

Sure, Apple has a failure here and there; but they're success rate is FAR higher than just about anyone else.

Unless your boat is a submarine, there is a whole other dimension of avoid ability with air traffic - you can pass through the same X,Y as long as Z is different.

Is that a very good idea? No, but it will definitely do in an emergency.

Further, there is nothing illegal about having a monopoly.

It is, however, illegal to use that monopoly to monopolize a different market.

Oh, I know. My team started the work of figuring out how to do Win7 migration two years ago, and started migrating systems 6 months ago. We had to sit down and figure out a completely automated way to do the migration, retaining existing user data. We had a process where every application was reviewed and repackaged specifically for Windows 7, including user acceptance testing. If it didn't work, then replacements were found or we virtualized it.

All our offices are complete now, but we're about 20% done with line-of-business systems, and we're doing over 300/night through automation. We're gonna be done sometime in June - but I hear of other VERY large companies that are taking the "Oh, Microsoft will go back on that April 8 date" approach, and I think they're going to be very unhappy on Tuesday.

There might even be some job openings.

The same install of XP, minus the annoying constant stream of patches?

Unless you're talking about large business, then they'll be (and are) switching to Win7.

Hardware cost of replacing a Lenovo T400 with a new Lenovo L440 laptop, with negotiated pricing: $700+
Hardware cost of replacing spinning rust from Lenovo T400 with 128GB SSD that buys another year+ of service: $91

Hmm, perfectly serviceable laptop in either scenario, but one costs $91 and the other is $700+. Oh, and when the T400 does get replaced, that SSD can be used to lengthen the life of a T410 or a T420, since it has a 3-year warranty.

Guess what? Your small shop experience doesn't jive with 100% of the use cases out there. Probably much less than that, actually. SATA II versus SATA III is irrelevant, because SATA II is more than adequate to see massive gains with a drive swap.

I just got done doing a benchmarking exercise to figure out what hardware to buy for our large business, where we compared like laptops from the "Big Three" (Lenovo, Dell, HP).

Rotational disk throughput, 1Gb random 512KB block read: 33 - 46 MB/sec depending on disk model

SSD disk throughput, 1Gb random 512KB block read: 339 - 464 MB/sec depending on disk model

Conclusion: Most rotational disks barely used the available bandwidth of SATA I. SSDs are only now passing SATA II speeds. A SSD on a SATA II controller is still going to be an order of magnitude better.

I did the same. Then I striped together two SSDs in the same config as the WD Raptors.

Still using a 2009 model desktop and using the latest software at full speed.

Well, the first problem is the first thing in your list: The radioactive stuff.

It turns out that it's rather expensive to handle, and there's a whole lot of it. We're not just talking about the fuel assemblies, though there is 42 years worth of that laying around; we're talking about the neutron-activated reactor vessel, the coolant loop, and the heat exchanger. All of them are low-level waste that needs proper disposal. Oh, and there's all the contaminated dirt from the tritium leaks that have been widely publicized.

After you deal with all of that, sure - you just do what you said. But dealing with all of that will likely cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Nah, they'll just continue running it a bit longer to power their bitcoin mining grid, and make up the difference that way.

Portland General Electric did this with the Trojan Nuclear Generating Station back in the early 90s. There was a state referendum on closing the thing, which failed. Then, PGE decided to decommission it due to a new mechanical failure that Westinghouse was blaming on the contractor that did the install, and the contractor was blaming on Westinghouse.

PGE decided they were both assholes, and they wanted the PR win. So they decommissioned it, sailed the entombed reactor core up the Columbia, and buried it at Hanford. Then, they called in CDI to demolish the cooling tower.

I guess I'm wondering why PGE was able to get this done, but Entergy is claiming poverty, when Entergy is WAY bigger than PGE.