While I agree with your post in general, your example of "a file server with a small set of files" isn't the best example of a case for a SSD. If that "small set of files" can fit into RAM, then a SSD isn't going to buy you much benefit outside of initially being quicker to read the data into memory. However file servers really are data set dependent, so without knowing the details, it's hard to say what's the best upgrade.

RAM is definitely not always the most beneficial upgrade for personal computers. Adding RAM definitely suffers diminishing returns to scale (which is generally true with everything, but RAM benefits seem to diminish more rapidly). It has been my experience that RAM beyond 4GB is much less beneficial than a SSD for typical personal computer usage. For example I upgraded my personal laptop from a 7200 RPM drive to a SSD and from 4GB to 8GB, and the SSD improvement is significantly more noticeable.

I've been running various flavors of Linux as my primary OS on laptops for roughly a decade, and I highly recommend the Thinkpad line of laptops (originally by IBM, now by Lenovo). Thinkpads tend to use mostly Intel parts, and Intel has great support for open drivers (see intellinuxgraphics.org or intellinuxwireless.org). There's also a great community at ThinkWiki (http://www.thinkwiki.org) which focuses on Linux on Thinkpads. My current personal laptop is a T400, and everything works (suspend to RAM, hibernate, sound, video, WiFi, etc.). My wife also has a Thinkpad, a SL400, and likewise has no problems running Linux (it actually runs much better than Vista which it came with). I was actually able to get my T400 from Lenovo's Outlet without Windows installed (it came with FreeDOS), so I even got out of having to pay the Windows tax. The Thinkpad is Lenovo's business line, and the build quality (on their T & W series in particular) is fantastic, and personally I can't live without their Trackpoint.

I have found that if you don't mind doing your homework ahead of time (mainly checking parts on the "customize your machine" section of OEM sites), it's fairly trivial to find a machine that fully supports Linux. With that said, Thinkpads are still my top recommendation (followed by Dell's Latitude line which also has a Trackpoint). I have no connection with Lenovo; I'm just a happy customer. For the record, I run Gentoo on my T400 and my wife's SL400 (she previously ran Ubuntu on it).

I too am very satisfied with my gTab which I picked up for around $280 from Woot in March. However one thing to note though is that Viewsonic is almost certainly not going to provide an official Honeycomb build. This is an issue because we need some binary drivers to get hardware acceleration working in third party HC based ROM's. Personally I've stuck with the Gingerbread based VEGAn-TAB ROM mentioned by the OP (and overall I'm happy), but if I were purchasing a new tablet today I would opt for one with an official HC build by the vendor.

Well the actual quote was, "I really think from an end-user perspective and a third-party-developer perspective GNOME and KDE are different operating systems. As much as MeeGo is a different operating system," and to an extent I can see his point from a end-user perspective. Obviously the underpinnings are the same, but for non-technical users who only use the GUI and never see/care what's below,l it's a significantly different experience. Especially with how Gnome and KDE these days even handle interacting with hardware slightly differently (e.g. GVFS v.s. KIO).

For example my wife currently runs Gnome 2.32 on Gentoo (which I maintain). Switching her to KDE would be a much more significant change than say switching to a different disto running Gnome 2.32. I know this to be the case because I originally had her running Ubuntu before we were married, and the switch to Gentoo (but maintaining Gnome) was painless for her.

For folks who've never heard of Zediva, they apparently let customers stream newly released movies. Their business model was that the customers rent the DVD and DVD player which are both located at their facility, and the customers access them over the Internet. Clever approach, but this shutdown should be of no surprise.

More importantly, Android applications are all designed with a touch based user interface in mind. One of the major issues with previous generations of tablets was that they relied on traditional applications which could work with a touch interface, but they were never designed for it. This made using the device for non-basic functions a headache. I remember the Oqo quite well, and as a geek I wanted one (or a Sharp Zarus...). However as an engineer and end user, I knew it was never practical and would be primarily an expensive toy.

I'm very glad to see programs like this. One of the reasons I chose a Nook over the Kindle was because my local library supported eBook lending. However I wish there was a way to donate eBooks I've purchased to the library (similar to how we can donate physical books). Do any online book sellers provide such an option (allow you to transfer the license)?

While I applaud this effort, I have to wonder if enough folks with the requisite skills to do kernel/driver development will be motivated to assist. It was an excellent product with some cool features (ZFS, Zones, Dtrace, Crossbow, etc.), but it was very clear that the vast majority of the development came from paid Sun engineers. The OpenSolaris community was never anywhere near the size of the Linux community, and even with Linux a significant portion comes from corporations (see "The Myth of the Isolated Kernel Hacker" from last year: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/08/20/1342223). I really do hope OpenSolaris continues (or Oracle changes the license to be GPL compatible), but at this point I wouldn't be basing any new projects on the platform.

Actually, I stick by my statement, "as long as it takes," because:
    a) It's an open source effort and if I want to use it, even though they haven't officially released it, I can do it any time I want. In fact I have already tried it using the Gentoo Gnome overlay, and I do agree it's not ready.
    b) They're continuing to work on Gnome 2.XX which is actually my primary desktop. This is very different than the KDE4 situation which basically caused the excellent KDE 3.X DE to be unsupported.

Now I do agree that repeated product delays are not a good sign (although I wouldn't go so far as to necessarily call it a, "sign of ineptness or a demonstration of gross incompetence"). Fortunately with open source software, I can determine for myself when a product is ready for my use regardless of an official release. There may be consequences with that choice (e.g. a redesign causes a significant break or lack support), but it's still my choice.

I truly hope the Gnome folks observed the KDE4 fiasco and learned some good lessons. They really need to make sure the product they release is stable and doesn't include significant feature regressions (although knowing Gnome, they'll probably call them usability enhancements...). There's certain types of software that can be unstable, and a desktop environment isn't one of them. I'm very much in favor of them holding off as long as it takes.

I'm hoping for Skies to come out as well if only for it to get more exposure (and possibly draw support for a sequel). Skies is one of my favorite RPG's out there (up there with the Genesis version of Shadowrun), and I'd love to see a sequel. The story & environment was fairly original, the plot was interesting and gameplay mechanics fun -- it was really a solid title. I think there's a little hope because the SoA designers have done small things like having the main characters make a cameo in Valkyria Chronicles.

If they do bring it back, I'm curious if they'll make a way to play that little minigame that you played on the Dreamcast VMU. You needed a reward from that to get the final form of a particular "weapon" in the game.

For the last several releases, Ubuntu has dealt very poorly with Intel video cards. Now to be fair, this isn't entirely their fault; they were impacted by the switch to DRI2, GEM, Modesetting, etc. However they haven't handled it gracefully. I have three systems -- HTPC (Dell Studio Hybrid), laptop (Lenovo SL400), and a netbook (Acer Aspire One) -- that use the i915 driver, and both 9.04 and 9.10 were horrible (no 3D acceleration, poor 2D performance, etc.). In fact 9.10 (and possibly 9.04) required me to pass a kernel parameter to disable modesetting (i915.modeset=0) to even get to a GUI to install.

I realize there were workarounds and hacks, to get reasonable performance from the Intel cards with the previous two releases, but nothing I found seemed simple or fully addressed the issue. This was largely due to some of the fixes requiring newer kernels and since Ubuntu isn't a rolling release distro, that would make fixing things much more difficult. My personal laptop (T400, also with a i915 video card) runs Gentoo, and I had fixed all the Intel video issues several months earlier.

Fortunately 10.04 seems to have gotten everything back to working well again, and hopefully all the changes will be worth it in the future.