Oh exactly. I don't use Facebook, mind you I'm a geek, an only child, quite old and I can do without a lot of superficial non-communication. I talk to my friends and have dinner with them, once or twice a week in meatspace. There's probably a camera in my curry, isn't there? Just a joke.

Enough said. I nearly made the 'l' an 'r' but I must think of the children, as Dave Camoron the suppository salesman has said.

I'm 64, still running and still coding. I demoted myself from 'consultancy' back to code about 10 years ago. I take care of myself, but it's not obsessive, besides like many runners, I like to run. I don't have a car and walk or cycle nearly everywhere, as in the 1960s when I was young. 40, given current expectations of longevity etc. is a young person nowadays. But I believe that attitude. lifestyle and personal expectation play a large part in ageing where there's no actual dysfunction.

Yes, sorry, over enthusiastic about the whole concept and I should have checked! Thanks!

Autumn for Pluto and Uranus.

Sorry, even at 64 years old, I couldn't resist that.

They've 'managed' [in all the senses] to avoid paying taxes in the UK, so there's no reason to buy their weak, frothy, expensive, faux-hip coffee from them. Go away.

Oh yes, the documents as you say, will be fine. The apps and infrastructure around them and any interactive content will not, for example. There's a certain amount of lock-in with anything that's cloud, except something open-source from top to bottom.

As for 'no lock-in' generally, try moving away from gmail.

I've been to a couple of meetings in UK schools where Chromebooks are being marketed agressively and potentially given away or sold at cost. If that's happening in the US, it's bumping up the numbers.

All the class material and class management are in the 'cloud' [that is at Google central] so 'you don't have to worry about anything' and the total cost of ownership is near-zero.

What's wrong with this picture? Plenty, vendor lock-in, third party and [in the UK] foreign control of a vital resource and not understanding whatever long game Google is playing, just to start with. They're maximising shareholder value or about to, they are not a charity. And as for 'don't be evil' my a***.

Above all, we can make [or repurpose] Linux books, quite easily.

A trapped rainbow, how sad. Next thing they'll be freezing the nice pink unicorns. This is bad science and something must be done, just think of the children.

I think you've been very lucky.

I'm 64 and still working freelance, nearly every day I get emails that are orthogonal to my skill set. For example, I've never been a tester and it's not on [and never has been] my cv, but I get emails for testing jobs.

That's apart from the over-specified buzzword bingo related to web CMSs and frameworks. For example, someone that's pretty good with Drupal [not me] can probably deal with Joomla after a week or two.

My main niche is Perl but I did an MSc project in Java, so I can read it and do elementary maintenance programming. But sometimes I see Java/Perl/Ruby/C#/bash specified in the same ad, makes you -really- wonder about the architectural choices going on in that shop, doesn't it?

To be honest, with honourable exceptions [you know who you are] most of the ones I've met seemed to have started their lives as estate agents [that's real estate brokers in the US] or car salespeople.

Never said that I did? As for your bad language and attitude that speaks for itself, doesn't it? So I wouldn't want to speak for anyone with that size of chip on their shoulder. It's nothing to do with 'fashionable' and nothing to do with 'excuse', it's e-th-ic-al. One side of my family are lowlands, but you make me ashamed. Enough said.

I notice you're an AC. Yes, a fair amount of the radical London East End left do it + the London chattering classes {N16, N1]. Since you probably work for ASDA or Walmart, you're not doing it, of course.

Of course, the 'not many people doing it' so it's useless is a common way to try and instill powerlessness. Got to start somewhere, ASDA, Coca-cola, KFC etc. etc.

Many of us boycott ASDA anyway, since it's Walmart. Waitrose provides good food and pays its staff. And no, I don't work for Waitrose.

Who said anything about 'product'? Maybe people want a) to learn stuff b) have an enjoyable hobby c) not interact with some vast evil American corporation d) do something different.

But please carry on with Google Play, iTunes etc. etc. we're not stopping you.