WDTV Live really impressed me a couple years ago first time I saw it. If you want something that works as well as WDTV but also want library scraping, XBMC on any new tiny-formfactor atom/ion computer should do it for about 30w. A heck of a lot less than xbox/ps3 + transcoding computer. I use XBMC daily, though I have a NAS that holds the media, which consumes another 24w or so. *Still* less than my xbox at idle.

Are you joking? A 32gb flash drive is the same price as a 3TB tape these days. Not to mention flash drives are easily one of the WORST ways to back data up.

The catch here is that *you* set the laptops up. Had you given the wives an Ubuntu CD and left them to their own methods, odds are they wouldn't be so happy.

Incl. WAN?

I have the RT-N16 also and am pretty sure it is just 10/100. You are going to have a difficult time finding a consumer router that has the processing power needed to perform Layer 3 switching anywhere above 100mbit/sec. I just had to retire my WRT54G and upgrade to this because it was maxing out at about 15mbit/sec to the WAN.

In order to get multiple wan balancing/failover you end up having to pay a subscription fee. No thanks.

The Kinect doesn't.

256kbps aac is definitely higher quality than most people would ever need, and professionally ripped audio tracks are probably better quality than what most of the target demographic for this feature will have. Apple is not aiming at the few on private trackers that download flac of V0 MP3s.

Even if you don't run Ubuntu, it will be nice to get the same hardware for less money. It drives me crazy when I try to buy a laptop, and there is no option to purchase it sans OS. This way even if your favorite flavor is not Ubuntu, at least you won't be paying for an OS you don't plan on using.

I feel sorry for the people that rely on Skype for all of their calling needs. At least they can pretty easily use Google Voice until Skype comes back up.

I know this was a joke, but posting this from a CR-48 ChromeOS notebook, I can verify that you can, indeed, left and right click on the links.

To be honest, that seems like a reasonable life considering what it is doing. For those that feel it is a deal-breaker, I'm sure there are options to extend the battery.

Just because the particular file only exists on your computer for the use of watching a single time (in a buffer) and then being deleted doesn't mean you haven't committed copyright infringement. Any prosecution with a half-decent argument will get that out in the open with an expert witness first thing.

Or way behind since iOS 4 runs like crap on the iPhone 3G

So who says someone couldn't just walk up to the giant gatherings *outside* a stadium and blow those people up? Or release a highly poisonous chemical into the water system for the stadium? I doubt such a system would actually do much to increase security. I know they haven't done much for the air-based transport in the US.