Instead of having to police sick days, a simpler solution would be to combine sick days and vacation days into "earned time off" or similar. Let the employee use the time as they see fit, no policing required, and you probably get better morale in the deal too.

They could use this wonderful network of tubes that we can shove bits through called the Internet. There's plenty of bandwidth to stream high-def TV, weather images, etc; in fact, it's done every day. The satellite network no doubt serves as an important link, but you would think that fiber optics work in a pinch. (note that this is not a weather data gathering satellite, just a weather relay)

The fact is, despite the cheaper labor, there is a great deal of overhead in doing business in China and similar countries. This includes infrastructure issues (i.e. electricity and transportation), responsiveness to customer demand, bribes, and the fact that it really does take more people to get the same work done. The US could be competitive, but it needs to unshackle itself from bad policy:

• Pass a national right-to-work law
• Reduce the power of unions, kill any threat to employers of card-check
• Move healthcare to either a totally open market (individuals buy policies, regulated, priced fairly based on avoidable risk), get the companies out of that business
• Cut corporate marginal tax rates, so companies are actually willing to make a profit in the US
• Work to eliminate regime uncertainty; stop dangling "we're going to overhaul this later" over major and minor US industries
  (regime uncertainty will hopefully get better after November)
• Work hard to reduce employer/employment burdens and costs

If our government did not make it so expensive to hire people, companies would hire more people. (Obvious 101, but apparently not to the current leadership)

It's out of date, flaky, insecure, and barely compatible with modern apps and hardware. The security model is broken, the memory model is broken (64-bit anybody? It's 2010, not 2001), and the UI is a primitive disaster. Just like Windows 98 during the 2002-2005 timeframe, lots of people are clinging to XP well past its sell-by date. It's time to move forward, deal with the issues, and get on with life. If you get that far behind the upgrade 8-ball, you will have a lot of pain; if you're still on XP, it's time to join the modern era. (Linux is not realistic because of business app support. OSX is not realistic because of the upgrade treadmill that makes Microsoft look downright saintly.)

I'm looking at this from the point of view of a normal electrical (or other utility) end user looking to save energy (saving money will of course depend on your rates, alternatives, usage level, etc)

What this whole discussion is missing is a number of simple, common sense design issues (solutions to many of which are already here). The smart grid is excessively complex, inelegant, and subject to all sorts of failures (including security issues). It is also in danger of leaving you in a place where if you have to revert to 'dumb' grid, you don't have enough capacity for the electrical end-users.

For some more elegant solutions that solve many parts of the same problem:

For air conditioning (and heating), we have a newer system (SEER 15) with a two-speed compressor and a variable speed air handler. This means that during the really hot and cold days where demand is up, the system behaves more like baseload (on a larger percentage of the time, but a lower power level) than peakload. More systems of this design would substantially smooth out the peaks. While there are no mandates, this system did get us a $1500 tax credit. (from Bush era legislation, no less). Also, a programmable thermostat really helps, particularly if it's smart enough to gradually bring temperatures up or down to your target (again, not having to run the system at full blast).

For refrigeration, at least in parts of Europe, vacuum bottle insulation is becoming quite standard for refrigerators and freezers. This is the same incredibly exotic, unusual technology that makes a Thermos keep your coffee/tea/soup hot for many hours without heat input. This saves a huge amount of energy via very simple efficiency, without any kind of smart grids or smart controls needed. Even better, give the refrigerator and freezer each their own compressor and 'try' not to run both at once unless you have to.

For lighting, there are already excellent solutions - CFLs, LEDs on the way, and motion sensors can automatically turn lights on and off if you want to go that route (not a bad way to go for something like hallways, though we haven't bothered). You don't need a smart grid for this, you just need a smart switch - localized means easier to implement, easier to fix, and no central control needed.

For water heating, the easiest and cheapest answer is efficiency. Wash your clothes in cold or warm water (they still get clean!), get a lower flow showerhead (The Delta H2OKinetic 1.6gpm ones are surprisingly nice, and this is from somebody who would drill out or remove the restrictor plates in the early low-flow designs), use a dishwasher instead of hand-washing dishes (uses much less hot water), etc. Insulated hot water pipes don't hurt either. But if you use a lot less hot water, it barely matters how you heat it. (though if you use electricity, the GE Hybrid coming out 4Q09 is worth watching - a heat pump water heater, with a normal resistive backup. Should be particularly nice and efficient if your water heater is in a warm place.) Besides, it's hard to beat the ROI of $30 or $40 for a new showerhead.

Finally, leaky electronics (i.e. DVRs are TVs that use almost as much energy as 'on' most of the time) would be easy to solve if you just made manufacturers DISCLOSE all relevant information about energy usage. You don't have to mandate minimums, standards, etc; you can solve most of this problem by giving people the information and letting them make a smart choice. For once, the usual consumer advocate nincompoops (think Consumer Reports) might even nudge people into the right direction with this.

We really need to get out of the "brute force global solution" mindset and look for local, elegant, cost effective ones.

Apple had a very different set of problems, but has actually pulled something similar off three times.

68k to PowerPC: Lots of apps didn't work, though it was really hard to tell what System 7 broke versus what 68k to PowerPC broke.

OS9 to OS10: utter nightmare. Classic works great as long as you're on a single-user system running as admin with well behaved applications. You run into everything from apps that expect to busy-wait to the fact that OS9 has absolutely no idea what's going on with concepts like file permissions. Ridiculous support nightmare on anything with non-admin users, multiple users, etc.

OS10 PowerPC to OS10 Intel: 99% of stuff just works. Very clean, very well done. The handful of apps that broke were generally easily fixed, or were broken by design (i.e. anything made by Adobe)

XP on Win7 is more like the whole OS9 to OS10 transition, and like that transition, your best bet is to ignore the existence of XPM (just like your best bet was to ignore the existence of Classic)

I've actually been running Vista as a primary desktop OS for about a month, after 14 years of Unix type OS as a primary desktop system (Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, OSX, even Solaris)

Why? It's a change. I was too comfortable with all of the Linuxes, the others weren't a good fit for an ultralight Thinkpad. If you don't force yourself to be uncomfortable now and then, you stagnate. (I do still have Fedora in a VM for quite a few things - I'm trying to make myself learn, not be a masochist)

The specific OS is Vista Business 32-bit, because that's what I had a license for (bought it with the laptop "just in case"). If I were to reinstall, I would go with a 64-bit version.

For backups, I am currently using Acronis TrueImage. Based on a test "full image restore", it works. It's primarily an image backup utility, not rsync or similar. I'm just doing routine backups to an external hard drive.

What you're asking for is actually pretty difficult under Windows, as far as I can tell; it' s far easier on Linux or OSX. On the other hand, there is something to be said for a full native Excel 2007 (sorry OOo fans, but calc is nowhere remotely close to a usable Excel replacement, including fundamental design flaws in the solver that have been there since at least 1.1)