I can't afford an Aston Martin - so should I be allowed to purchase a subsidised one? No! I accept that it is a luxury beyond my means - or I steal one. Music, Films and Computer games are luxuries - and if their cost is beyond the means of someone in a third world country then tough.

Office

I like 10minutemail.com. No signing up, no management - nothing. Just visit the site and immediately get a temporary email address that lasts ten minutes.

You yourself are making an assumption about the cost of the windows license.

No doubt this means the US will be stealing Serbian RADAR tech in order to defeat the Chinese stealth fighter.

I disagree. With windows installed the OEM can put other crapware on the laptop for which they are paid. This can offset the cost of the windows license. If you want a refund for refusing the windows license then also expect an invoice for the additional cost of having purchased hardware not subsidised by crapware.

But not _impossible_, as the poster implied.

As it happens, I don't recall the last time I played a DVD on my computer - I have a dedicated player for that - connected to a 50" screen.

Is DX10/11 needed for Visual studio? :p

According to that article heterogeneous multi-adapter will work in Vista/W7 if you use XPDM drivers instead of WDDM drivers.

At least that's my understanding of this:

A user could force the installation of a XPDM driver for each of these devices, and therefore get heterogeneous multi-adapter multi-monitor to work as in Windows XP.

Firstly, you do know that neither Vista nor 7 will let you use multiple cards with different drivers (e.g. you can't even use substantially different generations of nvidia cards together)? So much as you complain about it being hard to use nvidia+Intel cards for 3 screens on Linux, it's actually impossible in the latest versions of Windows.

I currently have a Quadro FX 570 and a GeForce GTS 250 installed. Once the different drivers were installed I had no problems with them both operating - both on Vista and now that I have upgraded to Win 7. I don't know what gave you the strange idea that it wouldn't work.

Windows 7 now has the ability to move full screen windows without having to restore-move-maximise.