Sucks to be anyone running Windows, I guess now all Windows users are pedo's, good job Gates!

The Bible is the world of god, spoken from his lips directly! ( Just not writen by him, not able to proven in anyway, not produced in it's native lanugage and globably accepted to be stories about how to live life ). But it's his word! how can you argue that? ( Minus all the clear proof of evolution ).

Even if Windows doesn't fit nicely into the cloud based world it will still be the king of the desktop. The buisness computer model wont change where you need Windows to be compatiable. The user computer model wont change where most users are unwilling to try something new. The big box store model wont change, there not going to start stocking Linux based boxes.

Microsoft has nothing to worry about, even Windows ME sold! They have the monopoly on the market, there going to live out to another relase, and a another relase and etc... If they don't support the cloud on release they will in an update and an update to that update to the update that installed the update for the cloud. Microsoft is a long way off from dying. Which isn't a good a thing!

I actually like to use that as a teaching lesson. I have my friends / family pick out ones they like and then I look at the hardware and tell them why they shouldn't get certain models. I've actually made progress doing this, my sister bought her second notebook recently and knew that intel graphics were completely unacceptable, she also knew that i3 was a horrible CPU, so slowly we can teach the less experienced about hardware. It's our duty as nerds!

I was recently asked this by my friend who is not a power user.

1. Good CPU, i5 or higher!
2. Good Video card, NOT shared memory, if you go for low end on this it will hurt you for the life of the notebook
3. Lots of storage, don't cheap out on the hard disk, there cheap so no reason.
4. Go 17" so you get two hard drive bays and can dedicate one to a boot SSD
5. Good Memory! If the memory isn't high quality turn away and run!
6. Good Wifi chipset, don't screw around with anyone that basically isn't boardcom, you want open drivers

Basically follow my rules and you'll end up with a good notebook. You don't have to be a power user to actually make use of high quality / good parts. The worst thing most notebook buyers do is go out and buy what they can get by with right now. If your going with the cheap option you better be prepared to suffer for the few years a head.

I personally hate Visual Studio, it's a horrible enviroment for any programming that is not Object Oriented. I program a lot of C and ASM and Visual Studio is the last thing I would ever grab. It's overhead, it overbloat and it's just not a very good overall IDE. Gedit + GCC is all you need for C development.

The first step of the chain is most likely in 98.9% of cases under paid labour and children in Asia. So how can I buy it with a clean conscience, well I just ignore where it comes from! I'm buying an end product not then supply chain. I know it's unethical and unmoral to just ignore the issue, but if I thought about it I would own no tech gear.

How much slower would it really have been, one day? Even less? rangeCheck from the sounds of it is a quick sit down, sip coffee, program it up and walk away method. I'm not sure that the act of copying it saved any amount of time that in the true sense of a marketing would matter. If they had copied a method which computed the inverse matrix of an image that then could be used to unlock a phone I would see the point.

Calling rangeCheck into question is like bringing a student to court for using compair() in C, anyone could write it but it's so simple no one does.

So if a fight breaks out during Halloween then everyone is screwed?

Installing Linux doesn't void the warranty even if they say it does. I've sent back my notebook with Linux installed on it and they never said a word. In fact they didn't even format the notebook, they fixed it and returned it and I never had to deal with the fact I put Linux on it. I know they might say that installing Linux on the notebook voids the warranty but there just trying to use scare tactics, I have yet to talk with or find a person who wasn't granted technical service because Linux was installed.