I prefer to have space for my applications, not for my dock. So on widescreen I always put it left or right. On 4:3 I always put it top or bottom. I have a problem filling my dock anyways... I mean: shutdown-button, firefox, terminal, and the "menu" for all the stuff I only use occationally.

You seriously think that "less is more" is a worrysome, generic contradiction?
I think it is very often a very good principle, in very different aspects of life.

Oh, and Windows native C++ development is horrible.

I have a stupid question... What is actually C++ about Windows Native Libraries. All I ever saw was just completely twisted C - twisted as in just weird datatypes, weird includes, and a Macro hell. I admit, you can declare variables anywhere (just not on top, as in C), but otherwise I cant understand how Microsoft can call it C++.

Real C++ is so different from Microsoft C++.

And QT is very nice. It combines the best of C, C++ and Java. QT Creator is the only IDE I ever appreciated. I really like the .pro file that contains everything about the project, and is still a very small simple text file; nothing like a configure-script or even worse a Microsoft Solution file. qmake uses the pro-file to make a Makefile.

This is just a problem for Microsoft. I mean, the way they tightly integrate everything they have into a mess that is unmanageable, mostly for themselves, is provokingly stupid.

To those of you who have not tried Windows 8, this is how it works... When you click the start menu, you get Windows Phone 7 (Metro) interface in full screen. And it starts with the Metro stuff in full screen, so you have to "start" explorer, to get to your desktop.

Apart from that, it is the same... but the old start menu is gone. Perhaps the real version will work differently.

According to my experience you are quite right. Now it might not be completely fair to compare that old 500Mhz ARM to the 1.33GHz Atom.

And yes, the Atom is very crappy compared to all the other CPUs.

The Microsoft App-store will be for Metro-apps. So, developers who want to sell on the App-store will write for Metro, and it will run on ARM.

I think that is quite fine. And I really like the idea of WinRT being next to the old and buggy Win32, if they get WinRT right.

But, I tried the Windows 8 Developer Preview, and I seriously don't know if I think Metro makes much sense at all... time will tell.

At this point it does not work (I just tried), unfortunately. But, I guess the answer to your question is; not happy at all.

I really like using old hardware as long as it works. But if you have 18 computers of the same model - do you really need to have the latest version of Ubuntu on those? Cant you just stay with 10.10 for quite long? Or switch to Xubuntu?

Use Xubuntu. It is about using the GPU to make a nicer GUI. Mac OS X did that since 12 years. Time for Linux to do it too. I have a 5 year old HP laptop (nc6220) that runs Unity with no problems.

There is a CompizConfig Settings Manager, where you can find Ubuntu Unity Plugin. There you can find things like changing Icon Size and toolbar location.

Writing a portable C/C++ program from scratch, and maintain it on different architectures: not so hard.
Porting an old C/C++ program already written with just one architecture in mind: seriously hard.

Just get it right from the beginning and you are fine.

I installed Chrome OS Linux (0.9.576 RC) on my old 7-inch EEE 701.

Not so impressed. I had expected Google to make something really slim and easy, almost only for webbrowsing. Instead, everything just seems to be OpenSuse rebranded as Chrome OS. Even the bootloader says it boots OpenSuse, not Chrome. Audio didn't work out of the box. It forgot my wireless password on reboot.

Back to Ubuntu 10.10 I think.

Wayland programs will not be able to run remotely. X programs should still be possible to forward between two computers using Wayland, as long as the client runs X-server on top of Wayland. The appliation server (X client) should only need a few X libraries.