Sysadmin here and I have a Netbook connected to a 26" 1920x1200 monitor and it works great. The only issue I have is when I need it to run Video on that screen then is sucks... but yes... My little EeePC has been wonderful. It Runs XP SP3, gets 7 hours on Battery in my experience, when I need to connect to work it's fine for VPN / RDP and when I need to connect directly to a router switch, etc... Putty works just fine. Also since it's my personal laptop and not a company owned one I do some gaming on it. Not much current but pretty much anything from 2003 or earlier runs like a dream. Max Payne 1/2, C&C Generals, Starcraft1, Quake or Doom 1-3, etc... You CAN do a lot with these devices you just have to use them as intended (or level set your expectations).

They don't hurt the Avionics they hurt the Pilots.

There's 36 listings now if you search the steam store by OS = Linux. Valve is porting the source Engine and those games over to Linux and have got really good FPS on L4D2, but so far only TF2 is on there now. There's also ~ 100 or so games that were in the Humble Bundles that had both linux clients and Steam codes so I figure those are likely the next up.

Also there's ~ 800 titles under the MAC section which ... if nothing else can't have a DirectX dependency so ... "up to MAYBE 1000 games" ? based on the current selection ? Realistically from just the Humble Bundles and Valve internal support you're probably looking at a little over 100 titles in the next year.

I like that they aren't in the hard drive business and allow you to use your own USB 2.0 Hard Drive (and they support capacities up to 2 TB.).

Though the Wii was a lot less powerful than either the 360 or the PS3 (meaning many games didn't get ported at all) that isn't the case with the Wii U. Call of Duty for Example is Activision has found little difficulty in porting their PS3 / 360 games over to the Wii U and getting them running better. Example Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Runs 1080p60 native on the Wii U, but 720p on the PS3 / 360. So if you're strictly basing it off of graphics, the Wii U is the best bet.

Though I love that Steam is on Linux now with a few dozen games, it's the SALES that keep me on Windows. I play online with a regular have a group of friends, and quite often there's a Steam sale that's 75% off (or more) and you end up getting a 4 pack of a game for $15 or less and we all throw down.

Since most of these are Windows only I'd have to keep a Windows partition if nothing else for these game nights.

Can you actually explain what the advantages are of having that extra 10% ? Once you go above 60 FPS you don't get the "stutter" and are actually rendering duplicate frames. So what is the Net gain of additional frames especially if your monitor (60 hz, or 120 hz) can't display them ?

Maybe you're too young to remember, but It's going to be VERY hard to beat the Sega Saturn as the "Worst Console Launch of all". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Saturn#North_America

Agreed. I LOVE Nintendo games myself and am thrilled you have backwords compatibility with pretty much everything that doesn't use the GC ports, but as of right now I'm waiting for more games. I think the price is fair and they'll get my dollars at some point (once we have an HD Metroid, F-zero, Zelda / Mario / Smash Bros ) but for me to buy in I really need at least 3 games available I NEED to play before I make the jump.

and don't forget all the additional controllers / adapters and add-ons they come up with!

The Wii does have a Netflix client (hulu+ also). I do however understand if you don't want to tell your wife that if you're using it for leverage to get an upgrade. :)

Just a nitpick but, in the US it's $300 or $350 if you buy-up to the Black one with NintendoLand.

Do you have a source for the CPU ? I never found anything that stated how fast it is and how many cores only that it's an IBM PowerPC chip (which isn't surprising since the Gamecube, Wii and X-Box 360 all use some derivative of that).

As for RAM keep in mind MS and Sony reserve memory for their systems as well, they just don't tell us how much.

PS3 has 256 MB of System RAM and 256 MB of GPU RAM.

X-Box 360 has 512 MB of RAM that can be used for Either.

Wii U has 2 GB of system RAM / half dedicated to games only. the other half to OS and GPU.

The Wii U being "As powerful as the PS3 / 360" is FUD. It's more powerful and really that isn't hard to do on a budget, considering those consoles are both over 6 years old. One other telling factor is if you notice the 3rd party games that are multiform COD, AC3, etc... are running natively at 1080p60 on Wii U and not on the PS3 / 360. This is also with first generation non-optimized code for the Wii U, pretty safe to say it IS more powerful than it's Current gen rivals.

some specs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_u#Technical_specifications

Then why are 3rd party games running at 1080p60 instead of 720p30 like they are on the PS3 / 360 ?

And it's being designed so you only have to use 1 to play the games.

?? The Wii-shop from the Wii carries over to the Wii U and you can port over all your downloaded games from the Wii to the Wii U. Seriously there's hundreds of games (including most old school nintendo games) that you can download.

Probably not right away, but they are launching with: Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, Universal remote control, and a browser. What other applications are on PS3 / 360 that you feel you'd miss ?