I misread the xbox one price of $530, it seems that's a bundle with kinect and other things. Anyway, console plus mid range PC is at the cost of high end PC. Could be wrong, but I thought many things also required an additional xbox subscription to get updates or do multiplayer.

Well my monitor is smaller than my TV, but it has higher resolution and sits closer to my eyes so that overall it's better. I can read fine text on my monitor much more easily than on the TV (though for console oriented games they try to avoid anything involving complex tasks like reading).

Ah, I don't play games in the living room. I must have a mouse and keyboard for that, console controllers are ergonomic and usability nightmares. Though I can see the lure of lounging on the couch, but then you've got lower resolution TV, even in HD (lower rez than a monitor at least, for those who want the best).

The irony was that people use to complain that getting a gaming computer was too expensive and you had to upgrade it ever few years. This was never really tru, unless you were one of those high end guys with the dual SLI graphics cards using more wattage than your refrigerator. But the consoles today are essentially the same price as a mid-range PC, often require an additional subscription, people still insist you upgrade them every few years, and they're not forwards/backwards compatible. No cost savings at all. Meanwhile I'm going to play Fallout 4 on the same computer that I just played Fallout 1 on, with access to more mods than consoles will have (yes, they announced mods for consoles but they will certainly be limited in availability and capability).

I don't walk away. I need to turn off my power strip, and I can't do that until the PC itself has powered off. So in Windows 8/8.1 there is a very noticeable wait after the monitor has gone black and lost sync until the PC actually finishes hard drive activity and powers itself down.

No, Windows 8 does a partial hibernation. Applications are shut down, then the kernel hibernates. If there was a crash or you manually do a safe boot or cold boot you will notice the full boot up times.

Windows 8 does this also though. The reason boot is fast is because it essentially does a hibernate of the kernel after closing applications. That means occasionally if something goes wrong you have to do a full cold boot, during which you can see how long it really takes (mostly same as Windows 7).

Shutdown however is tricky - it seems like it's fast, but once your screen goes black it is not actually done. If you've got a laptop you may never notice. If you've got a desktop you will see that the hard drive light is still active (thus very risky to turn it off manually via a power strip). This can take another 10 seconds, and occasionally I have seen it take one to two minutes for it to actually power down. Longer than Windows 7. During this time it is of course doing the hibernation, but since the shutdown time is variable I'm not sure what it is doing to in the rare cases of long shutdowns, maybe preparing an update for a boot-time install or something like that?

What I haven't seen is any indication of how Windows 8 compares to Windows 10 in the bootup/shutdown process.

And don't forget, competition is good. Single sourcing leads to technical stagnation.

If you've got a game on your PC, why would you want to show it on a console? I thought they whole argument for not gaming on PC was that it was too expensive so you stick to dumbed down games and tiny controllers in order to save some money. Yet here the scoop is that you can have both and stream between them, doubling the expense...

I'm probably not going to get a Steam Box ever. But to me it's biggest selling point is that it is precisely NOT an xbox. Using the word "useless" is pure FUD.

Early keyboards I used never had a second control key. And it wasn't around when I learned to touch type. So I learned to do things like Ctrl-A by just shifting the fingers over one space (control key *always* being where capslock is).

Whenever I'm on someone else's keyboard and control key is down in the idiotic IBM position it drives me crazy. Even the Windows and Alt keys are easier to press (Windows/Command is pretty easy as you use your thumb). To push that stupid Control key I have to curl up the pinkie finger and push it with the knuckle.

I never use laptop keyboards unless I'm forced to, I always use an external keyboard.

Hmm, never need Windows-D, the desktop is the only thing that ever shows. Minimize all windows is never needed (but sadly happens without my asking if my mouse drifts over to the hot corner). Explorer is less useful than right clicking on the pinned Explorer icon on the task bar and choosing the recently used location. Windows-R I have used a few times, but I often just create my own shortcut for the 3 things I have ever used that for (cmd, calc, and regedit).

So I could pry off that Windows key and never miss it, it can even fit into the same coffin as that pointless menu key.

Completely stupid feature, as stupid as Mozilla or Chrome. Microsoft won't be able to manage this, even now 90% of their updates have exactly the same title because they don't want to confuse users. You can only tell them apart by the KB12345678 number.
To get the actual description of what is fixed you have to click once and be told "this fixes an issue, for more information click this link here" and then on the second click you have to go to a web page and wait for it to load (script heavy crap). It's just too cumbersome to get all the information. My only conclusion here is that Microsoft wants the users to be dumb and docile.

I heard that pictures of the Earth were faked, even those taken at street level.

Hmm, when I upgraded to Windows 8 it did the application scan and listed applications that may have known problems. However it did not uninstall or disable them as I recall, but it's been awhile.

The thing is that it is going to update the OS. That means it may wipe out a lot of things, probably devastate the registry, probably delete stuff in "Program Files". For some programs it will try to migrate them if it's a well behaved application that it can figure out, meaning putting settings back in place when it's done, leaving it showing up in the start menu, etc. So "uninstall" may just mean it's not going to migrate it for you and then you have to dig down into the files to get to it. However maybe Windows 10 takes things a bit further and actually removes the application, as in deleting the files.

I think you can just run the tool to see if you're compatible. Anything that's flagged you can just make sure you have a backup of and that license keys are available if you have to reinstall. Or if it's flagged, give up and don't do the upgrade. It doesn't hurt to do the check.

The pro version doesn't require this. I also read somewhere (but have not verified) that they changed their mind at the last minute and added the capability to not update automatically to Home edition (see, a public outcry does work).

Luckily I have the Pro edition of Windows 8 anyway (for $14 it was a no-brainer to get that edition).