I get upset when anybody posts nonsense about any subject. From your statement about "if they have their way" I suspect you've the one who is angry at publishers of some content (books, movies, music, etc.) and haven't truly investigated eBooks and readers, but are merely relying on the one or two exceptional cases that made the news. If you had done your homework to look past those, you wouldn't be making silly claims in the face of open eBook formats and open-source readers.

Until I can get every book I want as an eBook, I'll keep the paper versions, which means I don't get to reclaim a couple of rooms in my house as soon as I expected.

Quotes around words doesn't guarantee you get that exact string. For example "LGA 2011" and "LGA2011" sometimes return results with the other version as the only one on the page. I think it's a "synonym" for Google, so they return both. Granted, with quotes, you get the version you type much more often than the other.

I hadn't known about "Verbatim", but it's a still a pain to have to change the results after you see them. It would be nice to have something I could type in the search box. I might be able to add "&tbs=li:1" (which enables "verbatim") to my default Firefox Google search, though.

It used to be you could require that results contain a term by using +"term", but it doesn't work any more.

Basically, Google is now being more "helpful" in returning results that seem to match, but don't really.

I've never seen this, but then with 12GB of RAM, I don't often get close to using that much for apps (cache, etc., of course). Maybe with less memory or a much larger workload than I have (which includes VMware Workstation running a couple of local VMs and displaying 4-5 remote VM consoles, audio and video editing and encodling, and non-bleeding edge games).

If you don't use IE (which I haven't for years), and you constantly have to run full admin tasks, you don't get any advantage from either of these.

Breadcrumbs are only a fraction of a second faster than just clicking "back" a few times or editing the path manually. Also, you lose the "up" button, which is the navigation I use more than "back to the last place". Jumplists would be great if you could edit and create your own without arcane knowledge of the filesystem. There are so many apps where the jumplist items are insanely stupid, like VMware Workstation, with the only item being "Create a new virtual machine". Outlook (a Microsoft app) doesn't have any jumplist, where things like "new eMail" would be insanely useful.

I have Win7 at work, and nothing is pinned to the taskbar, because I rarely have apps that need only one instance (which is the default if you just click the pinned app). Pinning to the start menu, the old "quick launch", and "Classic Start Menu" with custom shortcuts to give me back a nested, organized structure do what I need. I do like the "search" on the new start menu, though. And, don't get me started on the uselessness of "Libraries". I want to know where all my files are stored...I don't want the GUI shell to hide that info from me.

The actual OS of Windows 7 really doesn't offer a lot more than XP, although it does have some nice things that keep you from having to download something to do the job, like real-time TRIM support for SSDs (in XP, a scheduled job using the manufacturer's "toolbox" does good enough for real-world use), built-in UDF 2.5 support, built-in CD burning (although ImgBurn is still much better), etc. Notice that most of what both you and I list are user-space items that can be added to XP.

As for negatives, some of the extra security (like TrustedInstaller) makes for a pain in the butt if you want to customize some things (like standard MMC layouts). And, although it is easy to move an individual user's profile directory from C:\Users, moving all user data that can get large (C:\Users, C:\ProgramData) to another disk isn't nearly as easy as in XP. The tools to do the move in Win7 assume you are deploying many installs, so the task is much harder if you are just doing one machine.

Who cares? My eBooks are all in EPUB format, and if for some bizarre reason no "eBook reader device" in 10 years supports this open format, the actual text of the book is nothing more than HTML and CSS.

If you seriously think I won't be able to find a device that will render HTML 10 years from now, you're paranoid beyond belief.

Again, EPUB is completely safe from being "taken away", and hardware issues really don't matter when you have a format that can be read on virtually any device. As for "censorship", read about how you can no longer get the original version of this book in a physical book, yet my eBook version has the deleted text added back, because I did it myself. Sure, you might be able to hunt down a first edition and pay big money for it, but I'd rather spend far less money and a few minutes of my time to get the same result.

"Cheaper" or product placement are the #1 reasons for recognizable tech appearing in TV and movies. Very rarely does the writer or director really care about how it fits with the character.

This is why characters use iPhones far more than any other cell phone, despite the fact that the iPhone has a much smaller market percentage than non-Apple phones. The reality is that around 80% of people use non-Apple phones, which means that for any 5 random phones seen on TV, only one should be an iPhone, yet we all know that it isn't the case. It's also the reason that everybody on TV is now using Microsoft Surface on their tablets.

So how does that explain Microsoft ending support for XP x64 at the same time as for the 32-bit version?

One of the reasons I haven't upgraded to Windows 7 on my primary desktop is because I run XP x64, so one of the features of WIndows 7 that has really caught on with the masses isn't really a big deal for me.

Every drive tested here has handled over 1000x capacity of writes, which is around 3 years at your benchmark of 100% capacity per day. Every one of those drives is a consumer drive. Some are showing signs of eventually failing, but none has lost one byte of data.

In real-world usage, that means consumer SSDs are easily good for 10 years before write endurance becomes a problem.

Australia displays the "Research Octane Number" on the pumps, while the US diplays the "Anti-Knock Index", which is:
((Research Octane Number) + (Motor Octane Number)) / 2

Since MON is often 8-10 points lower for the same fuel, this results in 4-5 points lower on the pump display in the US.

Don't you mean "C-3P0 talking slightly slower than he normally does"?

After all, even USB 3.1 is only 10Gbps.

I regularly read 3-4 books if I'm on vacation for a week, especially if I am not the driver of the vehicle that gets me to my destination. It's a pain to pack that many in my luggage, and to be limited to just those books. What if a book turns out to be really bad and I move on to the next one? It doesn't happen often, but about 1% of books I start I quit because they just suck.

With an eReader, I can have 20-30 books to choose from (yeah, they can store thousands, but I agree that having that many isn't much better than having a couple dozen) instead of being limited to what I brought with me.

And, yeah, I'm starting to really have space issues. I've only got about 1000 books, but the vast majority are hardcover (about 85%) and take up a lot of space. I'm looking forward to taking my non-collectible books someplace I can trade them in for ones I haven't read. Even at 5:1, I could easily get 100 new books that way.

eBooks have settled down to that price, and often much cheaper, but it's still far too high.

First, with effectively zero cost for reproduction, every bit of the price should end up in the hands of people who did real work on the book (mostly the authors, with some for editors and middleman sales). If that happens, then a $4.00 price should be more than enough, as even best-selling authors don't get more than about $2/book sold. And yet, we still have many eBooks selling for $12. Sure, that's a deal compared to a new hardcover at $18-20, but...

...you can get a used copy of the book for $5 including shipping, which is just fine if all you want to do is read the book. If you're a collector, then you can expect to pay premium prices for mint condition hardcover copies.

No more expensive than an a gasoline-powered car of similar ability.

In the case of the LEAF, a good comp would be the Nissan Versa Note, which is $8000 cheaper (MSRP). At 35mpg for the Versa and with the silly assumption that the cost for charging the LEAF is $0, you still end up with 70,000 miles in the Versa before you hit the price of the LEAF.

And, neither one of these cars is useful to me, as I need room for more than two adults (yes, I know that both technically have 5 seats, but most of the people I haul aren't friendly enough to sit with their hands in their neighbor's lap) and their cargo. Once you can get a fully-electric vehicle of the same size as a Camry, Accord, or Sentra, then people might be more interested. Unfortunately, by that time, there will be hybrids or fully-gasoline versions of those same sized cars that will still be a better overall deal.

The only "law" that concerns this is contract law.

The manufacturer has a contract with each dealership not to grant another dealership within X miles the right to sell that brand of car. But X is highly variable, as I can find at least 3 dealerships for each of the major brands within a 25-mile drive, which isn't very far at all to go if you can save even 1% on the price of a new car.

There is no such thing as "no haggle pricing"...everything is negotiable.

You can get better than the listed price just by asking in places like Sears, Best Buy, restaurants, etc. You can do this even in places like WalMart, if you can go high enough up the managerial chain. I know, because I have done this personally.

Any car dealer that claims to be "no haggle" is lying, as there were many people who negotiated better than the marked price on Saturn vehicles.