I think around the time CNN saw Fox staking out the conservative-centric news angles, and MSNBC staking out the liberal-centric news angles they knew they were somewhat screwed. In at attempt to differentiate themselves they embraced the "let the people own it" mantra and started up all the tweeting crap and the iReporter stuff.

They're trying to find a niche, and not doing a good job of it if you go by the ratings. Unfortunately they have been the closest left to a "neutral" cable news channel. If they go under it will be a somewhat sad day.

When the GM at my first AD&D game explained the difference between INT and WIS....

I have yet to see a system that could effectively run XP that couldn't also run Windows 7. This includes :

My old rig which is old and actually got a substantial performance bump going to Windows 7 (4g ram and a E6300 processor, older nvidia card)
A Thinkpad X32 laptop which is also old by laptop standards (only drawback is no Aero glass interface due to older pixel shader)

In the vast majority of cases, if you can run XP, you can run Windows 7. Specifically the operating thresholds for it are lower than Vista because they streamlined some of the extraneous stuff Vista was hogging resources for.

And even in the case that someone needs to upgrade the amount of RAM, or video card in the system that's still a huge shade cheaper than "buy a Mac which is specifically only manufactured by one company and you will pay a pricing premium for"

I have to disagree with you on this. The ads do clearly state that it's 3G coverage. And the difference between 2G and 3G for heavy data use Smartphone owners is a very significant one. This ad is less deceptive than the AT&T one claiming the "fastest 3G network" when it is only faster because it's smaller and doesn't have to deal with coverage in spottier areas.

If you want to argue that it gives people the impression that the phones don't have any coverage even though they state it's 3G coverage areas the maps are talking about then you should also talk to Apple about the "If I'm going to move things, why not move to a Mac?" ads which neglect to mention that the difference between moving Xp to Win 7 as opposed to XP to Mac is the fact that you also have to buy a completely new computer on top of a new OS (making it just a tad more expensive...)

As a note from personal experience.

Going XP 32 bit to Win 7 64 bit - The "export your files and settings" thing actually WORKS now. Fresh install, reinstall office and firefox, import the previous settings all worked flawlessly (including ALL my FF add ons...). Most painless Windows upgrade I can remember.

I openly dare you to substitute "Fox News" for "slashdot" and e-mail this to Rham Emanuel. Just to see how many watch lists you end up on ;)

Look, if we as a community can't even get some cheap shots in on the new OS how will we ever stay on "Big Steve's" Christmas Card list?

You're new around here... aren't you?

Although I agree with your point. One lesson people should have learned from the UAC debacle in Vista is that if you have a security feature which will disable or prevent something from running make sure that the user has an easily accessible way to override that decision should they so choose.

That's a little disingenuous in your price estimates. In the case of Michael Dell, he's going to be using his companies corporate site licensing for Windows and Office. Which per seat would cost a lot less than your estimates there.

Also, as they're Dell he's getting his PC at cost.

So for him this would cost substantially less.

Now, for the rest of us?
If you have three PC's in your house pick up the family pack license when it releases, that's 3 copies of home premium for $150 ($50 per PC), Or you can get the OEM system builders edition of home premium for $89 I believe. (Recent Fry's ad)
Have any college age student in your house, have them buy your Office at the Student price. (Which could also work for Windows to lower the cost)

As for the hardware, if you are actually buying a full built system chances are it's going to come with the OS on it, so you can remove the seperate OS cost.

If you're system building for yourself and are that budget conscious you can get a i5 quad core and still see most of the benefits. (As the first review of the Nehalem process you linked said :

"Basically, if you already own a Quad Core Q6600 or a higher end Dual Core CPU, upgrading to this won't improve your performance by a great degree."

In your pricing estimates you're ignoring the first rule of shopping. Never Pay Retail.

Yes, the cut off is Feb 1st.

Which means he was nominated while people were still in the international post-coital bliss of his inauguration.

As for the moon, I think the last thing we want to do it bomb them, they've been known to throw rocks back at us....

Another thing which hurt Firefly was that Fox decided to air the episodes out of order. Watch them in the boxed set and they make more sense. Fox just figured that the whole explaining things and setting up plot parts wouldn't do good for the firs episodes, so they aired one with more action first. Then apparently split what was supposed to be the premier into two parts...

You know, in that comment you can easily.... /s/Microsoft/Google

just sayin...

Obviously we're moving more and more towards convergence devices which will handle many or all of the mobile technology needs of people. But we're not at that point fully yet.

Knowing this establishing yourself as a solid contender in one venue (music/media playback) isn't a bad thing. Then put together future offerings once others have dangled around in the market and figured out what people really do and don't want.

I could see MS coming out with a version of Windows Mobile that is a "everything under one roof" approach, but probably in another year or so. Take the interface of the Zune's and put it with the backside of Windows Mobile. Forcing a convergence of these two ahead of time would probably only cause a bad product to be made. Also waiting until the Windows 7 release machine hits full force, then release a new mobile OS and tie it all together with Xbox becoming a full on media center and you have something Apple wouldn't.