A Linux platform with Javascript applications...wait...where have I seen this before? Ah, WebOS!
But I guess more competition in that field is a good thing, especially from a player as big as Amazon. Curious how it turns out a few years down the road...

This one!

If earth is such an uncommon place to live in, then maybe we, in fact, are the extremophiles

That's not what he's saying. He says that earths are statistically rare. That doesn't make any predictions on the amount of life in the universe that might exist on not-earth like planets/habitats...

I did it gradually once they wore out. Never looked back. But my tiny flat wasnt that much of an invest.

Wow, cat got my tongue: http://www.webosnation.com

It's got a hardware keyboard, Linux underneath, homebrew scene going strong and a bunch of apps that you might find useful, ymmv. Battery life is 3 days with powersaver and data switching on/off on demand. Really everything you could ask for if you want a decent specced/priced smartphone which is a bit newer than your n900, sports a great capacitive touchscreen and since obsolete ecosystems seem to be your thing, welcome on board: www.http://webosnation.com

I wish I had modpoints. Kids today seem to forget about it and it could sure use some manpower.

They will also be the first to inplement DRM and prevent you on printing "copyrighted" or "unwanted" stuff...

It's posts like that, that make me feel like an utterly completely useless techguy. I know nothing about the modern web and I don't even know it.

I guess thats what Google wanted to achieve with that smartshoe last time.

Oh, and you can't change the battery or upgrade the HD/CPU/Ram. Thanks, but no thanks.

Not to mention you lose a lot of ports if you go the shiny Ultrabook road. You might gain the odd USB 3.0 port but you lose VGA, RJ45, serial, HDMI, Firewire, DVD Drive for watchting movies and so on.

My Dell is a M1330 with a Core 2Duo. No upgrade needed, everything works fine. No dead pixels, even the DVD slotdrive is fine. Just saying, Dell ain't THAT bad.

...no need for Gnome 3.8 now that Elementary OS is coming along so nicely. It tends to be forgotten around here as an alternative, so I thought I'd mention it.