The mod needs to be in his head. A laptop won't change his presence/personality. Insecurity over mistaken perception
Aluminum up armoring is a practical mod. You can use cheap flashing aluminum and silicone type adhesives to make a durable, tough and relatively light weight cover for easily scratched or soiled plastic. If your plastic is hard enough and in good shape, you don't need this.
Support GNU with stickers. GNU is good for you.
Setting up a Windows "server" is a security problem but not much more of one than an office full of Windows desktops. How many stories do people have to read about M$ specific viruses and worms before they recognize a complete security failure?
If you are Gartner and your business depends on people using Windows, you might overlook such problems and other parts of reality. The ease of setting up GNU/Linux has been a big problem for M$ for the better part of a decade. Why bother with a Windows or Sharepoint install when you can have Apache from an auto configuring, zero cost CD in about 15 minutes?
Under the Microsoft-NASA deal, the two are developing the technology and infrastructure needed to make NASA content available through Microsoft's Worldwide Telescope site. NASA Ames is also developing a suite of planetary data processing tools to convert historic and current space imagery data into a variety of formats to make them easily accessible by the public.
Color me sceptical but I don't associate easy access with the company that has fought off reasonable standards like PNG, CSS, ODF, Java, etc, only to push their only works on their latest OS tech. NASA, like every other big science group, is a big user of free software and Unix and the article mentions their close association with Google. How did M$ land this deal and what kind of exclusivity will they demand? Has anyone actually had trouble locating space images?"
"More software projects have gone awry for lack of calendar time than for all other causes combined." -- Fred Brooks, Jr., _The Mythical Man Month_