You aren't the only one having problems with the 2TB WD drives. I bought three WD 2TB Black edition drives and two failed within a year. I turned the remaining drives into cold backups.

The other moving spirits should be Doppler shifted after light is slowed. Even if you are "still," the other spirits continue to move relative to you. After light is slowed enough that Doppler shifts are noticeable at low speeds, the light bouncing off the other spirits should be Doppler shifted because they have a component of velocity moving towards or away you at a large fraction of the speed of light.

This has more to do with GSM vs CDMA. There was an article on Slashdot recently about how CDMA has "won" the protocol war because it can handle more simultaneous connections. What wasn't mentioned is that the main difference is that GSM tries to keep all current connections regardless of signal strength, while CDMA drops the poor signal calls if the tower is near capacity and a handset with a strong signal call is attempting place a call. As a consumer, I went for GSM. In the U.S., this means AT&T or T-Mobile, or a MVNO like Trak Phone or SIMple Mobile. I also like the GSM device selection better.

LTE may be changing this, though.

It is interesting to see which countries went with CDMA over GSM. As far as I know, only the U.S., China and Mexico use CDMA.

I really think that this might be part of it. Most people who want to buy a laptop go to a big electronics store. Those stores usually sell two types of computers. Crappy consumer laptops and Macs. The casing of the Macs is usually built from more expensive materials and manufactured to tighter tolerances giving them a higher quality feel. Sure they cost a lot more, and the user may not be able to do everything they want with it when they get it home, but the first impression in the store is what matters.

The problem isn't that high quality non-Apple computers don't exist. HP and Lenovo both even make nice business ultrabooks under their Elitebook and Thinkpad lines respectively. The problem is that these high-quality products aren't sold at the big electronics store where the consumer went.

Another issue is that even if the hardware is great, a ton of crapware can make even a faster computer with an SSD painfully slow. Apple typically installs less crapware on their computers. I know many of us consider iTunes to be crapware, but some of the software that mainstream computer manufacturers install is much worse. Some business laptops ship without any crapware, and most ship with a lot less. My local Best Buy doesn't sell a single computer that I would use without wiping the hard drive first.

I think that Apple's recent rise in market share has shown that the mainstream computer manufacturers have no clue what consumers want.

I would recommend a Nokia N900. Availability would be the tough part, but it will do everything you need. It has a nice transflective screen that is legible in direct sunlight, and it is one of the most hackable devices around. Being a phone, it has several radios in it, but those can be disabled through software.

The N9 would most likely also work, and those are still in production as far as I know. The screen is also legible in direct sunlight, but I think the N900 would suit your needs better.

Did you notice that your face does not end the call when you hold your smartphone up to your face? Most smartphones use a proximity sensor to disable the touchscreen when it is against your face. I see no reason not to do the same here. The camera is, after all, running a smartphone OS.

While I haven't tried removing any keys, I can tell you that the fn and ctrl keys are different sizes.

You can switch fn and left ctrl the keys in the BIOS on most Thinkpads. Sure, the keys would then be mislabeled, but if you always hit the wrong key anyway it wouldn't matter.

I got a Thinkpad X230, which has the same keyboard layout and a very similar keyboard. The biggest problem is the odd placement of the Print Screen key. It is where the right click menu key should be. In addition, the keyboard is rather mushy without much travel. I am sure it is much better than a normal chiclet keyboard, but the layout is inexcusable. I really like the backlighting, and the trackpoint is, of course, excellent. While I agree that the keyboard is a draw, I think that the trackpoint is a big one too. At least they didn't ruin that yet.

$2,600 of reported income.