People are switching to tablets and smartphones for their everyday web-browsing - sure. It's also true, that your average day computer has more than enough power to do everyday computing - tasks. But your average user will never buy a copy of Windows and upgrade his PC. If someone wants a new version of Windows, users go to their local computer store and buy a new computer with the new Windows version preinstalled.

When Windows Vista came out, a lot of people were actually very interested in a new version of Windows. After all, XP had been used for quite some time, had several quirks (security-wise), and so there was a lot of interest. Of course it quickly backfired, when users noticed all the quirks with Vista.

When Windows 7 came out, it really did influence PC sales. Users were enthusiastic about 7, it seemed that Microsoft finally "got it" and focused on providing a great experience both for home-users and business-users alike. It seemed that Windows 7 was designed according to users demands and wishes.

With Metro and Windows 8, it's the opposite. Even the enthusiasts say "It's not as bad as you think once you get used to it." What a horrible way of praising a new product - it's not as bad as you think.

Windows 8 has completely failed to attract end-consumes. Most end users find the interface useless and cumbersome. None of my non-techie friends would every buy a new computer to get Windows 8. And even my nerd-friends shy away from Windows 8.

So all in all: Tablets and smartphones eat aways desktop sales, but Windows 8 has rather accelerated this process than slowing it down.

7" seems popular, and even more so a lot of displays are 16:9 or 16:10. That's nice if you want to watch movies. But for reading, both 7" and/or 16:9 are absolutely useless. A magazine page just fits on one page and reads nice if you hold an ipad 10" upwards. Same goes for PDFs, the ipad is imho the only tablet right now where you can read ebook-PDFs (especially technical documentation, like O'Reilly books) without zooming, scrolling etc. 7" tablets are for movies and surfing the web, but not for reading documents.

Since there seems to be much confusion, I'd like to add a few points to this article. There are two notions of warranty in Europe.

1.) A mandatory warranty that all _sellers_ of goods have to give by law, which is valid for two years. This covers only problems that existed prior to the purchase. So for example, if some part breaks simple to being worn out, the _seller_ has no obligation to cover it. If a problem occurs within the first six month after purchase, it is assumed by law that the problem existed prior to the purchase. The burden of proof that the problem did not exist prior to the purchase is up to the _seller_. In practice, such proof is difficult, and thus _seller_ will usually handle the problem. After six month up to two years, the burden of proof is up to the buyer. Since again, this is almost impossible to do without an expensive expertise, this effectively limits this warranty up to six month. Note that this is an issue between the _seller_ and the _buyer_, even though if a defect occurs and the seller is not the manufacturer, say the seller is amazon, the seller when faced with a defective product will claim the same warranty to the manufacturer. Some might have other agreements with the manufacturer.

2.) Almost all manufacturers give on top a voluntary warranty to the customer of two years. This warranty is completely voluntary, and the customer has no real legal means to enforce it.

What happened here is that Apple is one of the very few manufacturers who only give voluntary warranty of one year. They (essentially the apple store) tried to sell additional warranties for up to three years (Apple Care), but without making it clear, that the buyer can anyway claim warranty against the seller of goods for up to two years (even though, this is hardly enforceable after six month, unless it is a problem so widespread that it would, say, lead to a class-action lawsuit in the US). The judges asked Apple to make this more explicit. Instead, Apple finally went ahead and introduced voluntary warranty conditions that are similar to any other manufacturer in Europe.

Finally someone can write a working uninstaller!

I bought a HTC Magic. The Magic was released roughly the time when the 3GS was introduced, and has comparable hardware.

I am on contract with NTT Docomo. Officially the Magic is stuck here at 1.6. By flashing Cyanogenmod, I could get up to 2.2.1. Some at XDA have made 2.3.3. available, but it is slow and unstable. Updating has the risk of bricking the device. Very like, it will never see 4.0.

Considering the price, I did not even save any money.

The update experience on Android is simply a joke. My next smartphone will be anything but Android. Windows Phone 7, iOS, heck even Blackberry will give me less trouble.

That's because they are competing on an unfair market. The Chinese government is highly corrupt and is trying to support chinese companys where they can. They do not only block youtube, twitter, google and the like for political reasons, but also to support domestic companies. If you cannot reach youtube due to the firewall, of course you will change to a chinese alternative. Same goes for twitter, google, and all the other google services...

I am very happy that it worked out nice for her. But from my personal experience, a) your gf, unless she's very into high-tech and gadgets, rooting her phone and installing Rom-Manager alone is quite exceptional and b) I wonder what've happened if there was even the slightest problem, let alone bricking her phone - which still is a possibility in a lot of cases.

I updated a non-US HTC Magic (both new radio and the T-Mobile US-Froyo-Image) and found the process far from trivial. And I do have a CS degree. Maybe I should've gone for history instead.

The sad fact is that while of course, the iPhone 3G won't get iOS5, you can roughly expect at least 2 years of updates for an iPhone. Whereas some (but not all) Android devices are given up much quicker.

Steve Ballmer's FUD is insofar correct in that if you want to update your Android-phone after the maker and/or carrier abandoned you, you indeed almost need a CS degree to update it on yourself.

The update process is indeed quite well-done on WP7

There were at least third party tools, like GSynaptics that worked. Of course nobody cares about backward compatibility, so that doesn't work anymore. GSynaptics was continued into GPointingDeviceSettings, which was quite powerful. I am not sure whether it was part of the official gnome-project. But then again, it is not available for Gnome 3. Of course neither the Gnome-folks nor the distribution makers actually care about those things. After all, who needs a working touchpad, if instead I can get the _latest_ version of Gnome, right?

> what they do when they come home after work???? if you come home from work at 11pm, maybe you just want to sleep? Japanese folks are required to do long hours a lot, not matter if the overtime actually makes sense or not.

Number one. In fact, Deutsche Telekom has an incredible huge debt they want to get rid off.

definitely not. At that time, ppl were really waiting for a usable and affordable Unix system for x86. BSD was sort of blocked due to the legal battle, commercial Unices were not affordable, and the development model of minix didn't allow it to become a "real" OS, it was just a tool for teaching. GNU at that time had an excellent track record - maybe not timewise, but then again, they were producing real results (all the gnu commandline tools, the gnu c compiler, emacs etc.). Back then, it really seemed that it was just a matter of time until we all would see a full GNU system... well... history told another story...