It would make my week to see Dell aggressively promoting new products based on RH software.

I can't see Microsoft allowing that to happen without a fight.

I will go out on a limb here and say that the digital assistant is an idea that is yet to be fully realized.

Clippy, or something like it will be a regular feature of computers years from now. With improved AI, processing power, speech recognition, always on Internet connections and better search engines a virtual assistant will be able to really do something for users other than annoy them.

People who aren't nerds/geeks//. readers would likely find comfort in having a "little man" in the computer that can talk to them and understand what tasks they would like it to perform. Heck, if its good enough even /. readers might want one on their desktops, too.