overgrown PDAs that still don't have enough pixels to do anything useful with.

It's painfully obvious that you're talking out of your arse and you don't have a netbook.

For what it's worth, I use SolidWorks 2008 on my EeePC 901 professionally. Sure the screen isn't as nice as a big desktop thing, but it's perfectly usable.

Microsoft has one very big problem: they totally missed the low-power PC revolution. They have sunk insane amounts of money into their new OS that, as tradition has it, is slower and demands better hardware than the previous one, and released it when (1) XP had just started to mature enough for people to consider it good enough and (2) when the best selling PCs can't run it.

What they should do now is split OS lines, i.e. support XP for small PCs, and Vista for big machines, instead of trying to kill off XP. But they'll never do that, they're much too stubborn.

As for growing XP registry and general mess on the system, that's easy:

- Disable automatic Windows update. Yes, get a decent AV, a decent non-Microsoft browser, a decent non-Microsoft firewall, behave rationally when you browse the web and you'll be just fine. Each new update of Windows seem to be worse than the previous one anyway; one could almost believe they're trying to make XP worse than Vista for some reason I can't fathom. [/sarcasm]

- Disable prefetching for anything but boot programs. You'll recover many MANY megabytes of disk space, and you'll boot a ton faster.

- Run things like ccleaner regularly

- If you're really short of disk space, consider nLite

(This post made on a EeePC 901 w/ XP)

Several years ago, my mother got herself a computer. I lived abroad, so she did that all by herself. When I came back, I fell into the trap of doing computer maintenance for family, and finally I got tired and told my mom I'd install Mandrake on her machine. She said okay as long as it worked like Windows. Sure I said, you'll see...

So I went buy a mandrake CD, installed it, gave a small course on how to do things on the machine, and told her how she didn't have to worry about viruses and spyware anymore, etc... The first thing she said to me was : "but my CD with the program to remove red eyes from photos doesn't work on it. And neither does my cliparts utility, and the fun online postcard programs my friends sent me by email." and I thought, shit, I didn't think about that. So I tried to get her to use Gimp and other open-source utilities, but it wasn't "the same", it wasn't "her programs".

So eventually I told her, look, it's either Linux with no worries, or Windows with all your toys, but you worry about security and backups yourself. She chose Windows, never once called me for support anymore, and that was it.

My mom is 70 and now owns 3 computers, including an EeePC that she keeps in her purse all the time. So the moral of that story is, unless your "senior citizens" (also called old persons in non-politically-correct circles incidentally) is mentally deficient or just not interested enough, don't take them for idiots and tell them that, yes, computers are a pain, and you've never had one, and yeah it'll be a tough learning curve, but you're perfectly able to do it. And don't let them use their age as an excuse for laziness.

But why the heck is the header for this article red on the front page?

Have you ever been tested?

another chief Beagle engineer has said 'We still think we got it right.'

They got it right, yet the mission failed. What sort of weird mental block do these people have?

All we need is for the government to get its head out of its ass and give money to people who truly need it (i.e. those who are close to defaulting on their homes).

These people might need it, but they certainly shouldn't have it. They and the banks got us into this mess, the folks who think they have the right to own a 5000 sq.ft. house on a garage mechanics salary, and the ones who approved their mortgages.

Both deserve what comes their way, the former for extreme stupidity, and the latter for extreme greed. I fail to see why those who manage their finances and don't live above their means should bail these folks out.

Because you thought "pushing for more network reliance" is a user-oriented wish? How quaint.

Console makers wouldn't mind it if only 1/3rd of the population had access to their online games, if said 1/3rd has to pay and pay to play. They don't care about providing service to the other 2/3rd, they only care about their bottom line.

I hardly ever buy physical games or software for my PC

Most people don't either, but because they work standalone, they can get away with it. The whole "online services" thing software companies are trying to ram down people's throats these days (online OSes, word processing, spreadsheets, games...) is just so they can wrestle control of the software from people's hands and charge whatever the hell they want for anything.

So in short, you'd better not hope software on CDs and DVDs disappears, because you'll be very sad if it happens.

Oh yeah? How about "The USAF accidentally dropped a nuclear bomb in Redmond, WA that fortunately didn't explode, but damaged the building of famous Windows OS maker Microsoft, instantly crushing CEO Steve Ballmer and the entire marketing team into a pulp."

Feel better now?

Xanax saved my life and my sanity - I was incapable of going out around people for a year for fear that i'd completely freak out or have spontaneous violent evacuation of my bowels

You don't need Xanax, you need Imodium.

I'd be more worried about destroying my teeth if I were you...

Losing your voice would suck. But having a synthesised voice on the other hand, is way cool. You could go around quoting robotic things like "would-you-like-to-play-a-game-[?]"

or you could start a career as a stephen Hawking impersonator.