> twice the performance
This comparison misses the point about SSDs. Yes, SSDs may have somewhat better bandwidth, and may improve startup times slightly, but that is not their advantage. They have awesomely better seek times, which makes some operations hundreds of times faster. Putting Visual Studio's
This blog post I wrote discusses the random I/Os to the Windows Live Photo Gallery SQL database at startup. On my photo collection I see 5,000 random disk I/Os, which are painful on a laptop HDD but would be a non-issue on an SSD:
http://randomascii.wordpress.com/2012/08/19/fixing-another-photo-gallery-performance-bug/
In situations like this an SSD is probably a *hundred* times faster than an HDD. Database accesses seem to be a common scenario where an SSD is worth its weight in gold.
In short, if an SSD is only twice as fast then it's not worthwhile. If it's ten to a hundred times faster, then hell ya.
Dumping pollution into the environment is often cheaper, at least in the short term, than trying to avoid creating waste, or trying to dump the waste responsibly. Burning coal is cheaper because of this. If you factor in the costs -- acid rain, altering the chemistry of the air, acidification of the oceans -- coal is more expensive.
And, by reducing their fossil fuel imports Portugal has now insulated themselves from the vagaries of the energy market. The next time oil prices spike the US will be force to send crates of money to unfriendly regimes because the US is addicted to their oil. Portugal will thrive while the US stumbles.
Portugal is planning ahead. The US is hoping that it can continue to be profligate forever.
Money isn't necessarily a proxy for emissions. Often it is a proxy for human labor.
Now if you'd wanted to post some alternate suggestions that work on linux then that would have been productive. Merely mentioning that a free Microsoft program doesn't work on linux, when the OP asked about Windows, is just trolling
The two PCs that my other family members use are both locked down -- they don't have the admin account passwords -- and they are totally fine.
Your complaint is outdated. And you haven't provided any examples of these many programs that (inappropriately) required administrative privileges. Put up (so we can evaluate the importance of these 'many' programs that require root) or shut up.
As for proprietary networking, my Windows box uses TCP/IP. What does yours use?
And I didn't really understand #1, #2, or #3. You need to give more details to justify your claims, and preferably to show how they are any different from Linux/OpenSource bugs.
Genetics explains why you look like your father, and if you don't, why you should.