The proposed lawful access legislation that will give law enforcement sweeping new powers, put a tremendous strain on smaller ISPs, and put all Canadians at risk of inappropriate and unnecessary surveillance. This 1984-like legislation is something that has been in the works in one form or another since 1999. It seeks to add far more warrantless Internet surveillance options for law enforcement officers. While I very much respect and support our fine police men and women, the information that the proposed bill will grant, without warrant or or oversight, should concern all privacy-loving citizens. Ontario’s fantastic privacy commissioner, Ann Cavoukian, outlines her concerns eloquently in an interview with Search Engine’s Jesse Brown:
http://searchengine.tvo.org/blog

Anyone interested, and we should all be interested, should read up on the details, listen to what others are saying, and let your MP know how you feel about this potential invasion of our privacy. If you feel strongly about this, you may also want to fill out the Open Media petition.

http://www.realprivacy.ca/write-my-mp
http://openmedia.ca/StopSpying

The Internet is what we make it. We should all be active participants.

I've owned a PlayBook since it came out and haven't regretted the purchase, even at full price. The hardware and size are great, the speakers in particular are quite impressive. The screen even works very well outdoors, too. Moreover, I much prefer BlackBerry Bridge to native apps. I love being able to turn off the phone and not have to worry about alarms going off on the tablet. The Bridge integration is great. I wish that, rather than native apps, RIM would bring Bridge apps to iOS and Android phones.

I'm running OS 2 beta now. The Android player works as advertised. That said, I haven't added many Android apps, as there are now reasonable native apps for everything that I need but WordPress. (For which the Android version is working perfectly.)

I know it's cool to dump on RIM these days, but I just bought a Torch 9810 and prefer it to any Android phone, and I love the OS that the PlayBook runs. It works so much like webOS and is such a quality device. Apps at launch were pretty terrible but I now have a few great games, an SSH client, a reasonable epub reader etc. Docs To Go works well, and the browser is the best tablet browser I've used.

If I didn't already own a PlayBook I would absolutely snap one of these up. RIM is still profitable and I think they're in this for the long-haul. There's no doubt that 2012 will be a critical year for them but they aren't done yet. (Of course, this is coming from someone who just recently gave up on webOS.)

I buy many laptops for people in the Computer Science department at Queen's University in Kingston. Of course, things vary by the model but in general I stick to HP's EliteBook line of business laptops, Lenovo's ThinkPad T and X series, Panasonic Toughbooks, or Apple MacBook Pro/Airs.

Personally, I own a mix of the above, almost all of which I purchased used. Ebay can be a brilliant resource if you know what you want.

My current favourite laptops are:
- 11" MacBook Air. 2lbs, silent, solid, awesome. - $999
- 12" HP EliteBook 2710p with SSD. Silent, 3.6lbs, fabulous screen, great build quality, ThinkPad-like light, perfect Linux compatibility - ~$300 on eBay
- 14" Panasonic ToughBook CF-Y5. less than 3 lbs, 1400x1050 screen, incredibly light for the size. Perfect Linux compatibility - ~$400 on eBay
- 17" HP EliteBook 8710w. 7lb 17" 1900x1200 display. FAST Core2duo with good worsktation-grade card, decent battery life, a screamer. - ~$500 on eBay

As you can seem, I have a laptop for pretty much any size and need, all of which combined cost about the same as a well configured new machine. Two of the eBay machines had a 3 year warranty, so I ended out with about as much warranty left as if I had purchased a new low-end machine.

Honestly, unless you have a very specific need, I'd buy used. I love what System76 is doing, but having seen one of there machines, they aren't brilliantly made. Certainly as a Canadian it doesn't make sense for me to buy one and ship across the border. Stick to high-end business machines. New if you have money to burn, used otherwise.

Maybe you'll like the upcoming HP TouchPad.

WebOS is a fantastic operating system, Linux underneath, apps in HTML/CSS/JS, C++ for those who want 3D and high-performance. The browser is brilliant, multi-tasking is fantastic, development is a snap and is very open. True, the OS isn't fully Open Source, but Palm have a great development platform and a very open approach to development. The hardware looks great too!

I've been a gog.com customer since their early access beta in September 2008. While I am certainly annoyed by this blatant publicity stunt, I'm far more relieved to know that gog.com is still in business.

This stunt aside, the folks at gog.com are very cool. Not only do they release affordable and fantastic games - most of which I'd never heard of; but they are clearly doing this as a labour of love.

I host an annual LAN Party for the Computing students where I work. I contacted gog.com before going on a shopping spree there to see if they had any objections to me using a single paid copy of each of their games for the one-day event on the entire lab full of machines. Of course, there was no technical problem with this, I just wanted to check that they had no objections with this.

Far from objecting, they very quickly and enthusiastically gave me the OK and asked that I take pictures of the event to share with them. They were completely professional and reasonable to deal with.

So, for about $100 I was able to legally fill a lab full of machines with great games, some of which were new to the students. What a deal.

(I should also mention that Valve has been equally generous with Steam licenses, though they typically work for 24 hours only, which doesn't give me much prep time. Valve the company has also been much more difficult to communicate with.)

Anyway, back to the thread at hand: Welcome back GOG.com. You got me fair and square. Now DON'T EVER DO ANYTHING LIKE THIS AGAIN.

Now please excuse me while I rush off to buy the copies of Syberia and Another World that I'd been meaning to pick up...

Sure, you can buy a new PC laptop for under $400, but will you enjoy using it? How about in two years?

You can pick up good quality used macs for the same price as crappy new PCs. And a decent new PC isn't cheaper than a low-end MacBook.

Personally, I'd rather own a three year old MacBook than most of what Best Buy/Future Shop/Stapes are pushing from Acer/Asus/HP/Lenovo. Most of what is in stores is junk. Apple doesn't sell junk.

(Having said this, I'm typing this on a lovely HP 2710p running Ubuntu.)

OK, I accept your challenge: The HP EliteBook line. (Which are never in stock at Best Buy/Future Shop.)

I'm typing this on a three year old HP 2710p which has since become the 2740p. It's an extremely tough 3.6lb machine with a lovely screen and stylus support, trackpad and trackpoint, a light (like the ThinkPad lights). The battery is rated for 5:30, up to 11 with an optional slice. It can take a very slim dock for extra USB, DVD, video, etc. The 2740p has both touch and stylus support and can be configured with Core i5 CPUs or ULV options, depending on your needs. They have the best keyboard I've ever used, they come with three year warranties as standard options, and they are lovely to work on. (I've upgraded HD and RAM on mine.)

I own it and a MacBook. It is by far my preferred laptop. The screen works well outside, it's sturdier, and it runs Linux brilliantly.

However, on balance, I completely agree with your assessment. Almost all PC hardware is junk. Apple doesn't make many types of machines but they are all of very high quality, they run Windows (and usually Linux) very well, they have stellar battery life, and they are the same price as decent PC laptops that can't run Mac OS.

I recommend Macs a lot at work. Why not? Don't like MacOS? No problem. I prefer my HP EliteBook but they're a pain to buy in town. I can send people to a half-dozen different stores in town that sell the full line of Apple laptops. As a bonus, the hardware is well understood and I might not have to support Windows! Easy decision for me. Plus, in Canada, Apple and Dell seem to be the only two companies that haven't switched over to bi-lingual keyboards with odd layouts.

It's a sorry state at the moment. Microsoft as monopolist was bad. Mac OS is a lovely OS and Apple makes nice hardware. Still, as companies go, Apple aren't great to deal with. I'm happy to see that MS has been unseated as the untouchable monopolist but I have to think that it will be worse if Apple finds itself in a similar position.

Here's hoping the competition will improve. Linux does keep improving steadily. If it could emerge as a reasonable competitor and keep things even, that would be my preferred outcome. Time, development, and consumer decisions will tell.

On Palm/BeOS: No, Palm/HP doesn't own BeOS.

At the time that BeOS was sold to PalmSource, there were two Palm companies: The hardware (called PalmOne at the time - later renamed to Palm) and the software (called PalmSource).

PalmSource (the software behind PalmOne, Sony, Dana, Tapwave, and other PalmOS 5.x devices) bought BeOS assets for $12m, PalmSource eventually was bought by Access Software, a Japanese company. They used Be technology to create PalmOS 6. It never shipped in a device.

Access eventually sold rights to PalmOS 5.x back to PalmOne (the hardware company). PalmOne renamed themselves back to Palm and shipped PalmOS and WinCE devices until the Pre and WebOS. Now Palm is being sold to HP. I'm not sure what Access is doing with the PalmSource software. I know they ship an emulator for Nokia's Maemo devices, such as the N810/N800.

So, HP/Palm/PalmOne own rights to PalmOS 5 (and all of PalmOne/HandSpring's IP), Access owns rights to BeOS and PalmOS 6 (and 5, I think.)

What a tangled web this is.

I'd also opt for the Sony.

A friend gave me his PRS-505. I find it to be fine. Not great but fine. No doubt the newer ones are nicer. The 505 reads ePub very well, handles PDF, works with the pilot Digital Editions Library service offered in my municipality (borrow eBooks for two weeks at a time.) It works well in Linux and Mac OS. Getting books on and off is a snap, just using drag and drop. Battery life is good. The Sony Reader store has a reasonable collection of books at a decent price. It's generally not cheaper than a print book from Amazon.ca but the format and selection is convenient for me. The old Sony eReader Store used a proprietary locked-down format that nothing else could handle. Thankfully, the new Sony Reader Store now sells books in ePub format.

Now, the ePub books sold at the Sony Store are DRM-encumbered. This, of course, is very bad. (See other comments for good examples of why.) Having said this, if you live in a country with sane fair dealing/fair use laws, you can, with a little work, find reasonably straightforward ways to remove the DRM from the books sold at the Reader Store.

Piracy is bad, so is treating your customers as thieves by default. I won't ever pirate a book; nor will I invest in a locked format that I can't use as I'd like. I buy almost all of my music on-line now because I can finally buy MP3 and AAC files without DRM. I won't buy into digital movies or Blu-Ray because of the DRM. I was very reluctant to buy into electronic books until a I had a good source of DRM-free ePub books.

Thankfully, publishers seem to be getting this faster than the music and movie studios. Pretty much all O'Reilly books are now available as ePub. The Sony Reader Store sells ePub that you can eventually turn in to standard DRM-free books. The situation appears to be getting better. One can now read books purchased through the Sony Reader Store in Linux and with ePub software for phones. The situation with Sony reminds me of iTunes pre-M4A. Yes, you could buy an album electronically but you had to burn it out and rip it back to side-step the DRM. Not terribly user-friendly but not horrible.

To me, the worst thing about eBook readers is that vendors are locking customers in to closed silos. A Nook can't read Kindle books, Kindle can't read the ubiquitous ePub format. All the while, you can walk down to the store and buy the print version without any of these limitations for about the same price. This is madness.

Privacy concerns are also a problem. The thought of a device, with an always-on wired connection, allowing companies to remove books post-purchase scares me. The thought of Amazon knowing what page I am on of every book they sell me also bothers me. In all of this, Sony, of all companies, looks the least bad. Go figure.

No doubt it's early days. I think you'd be nuts to buy anything that can't handle ePub and PDF. I also wouldn't buy anything that locks me to a single supplier of books.

As far as I'm concerned, this is the pinnacle of netbooks:

http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?sku_id=0665000FS10128254&catid=27003&logon=&langid=EN&dm=DEBUG

Intel Atom, 9" 1024x600 matte screen, 2lbs, thin, runs Linux perfectly, decent battery life, perfect keyboard, $200.

That's a netbook. 12", dual-core, 3+lbs, $500 isn't a netbook, that's a decent 12" laptop without an optical drive.

The thing is, you can pick up much better used 12" 3+lb laptops for $500. Heck, I'm typing this on an HP 2710p tablet I picked up on ebay. It is a 12", dual-core, can take 8GB of RAM, and is a TABLET and it cost me as much as this Asus "netbook" after taxes.

The only reason you need dual-core ION and a big screen on a netbook is because Windows demands it. My HP netbook (linked above) runs like a dog in Windows by the time you add virus scanners and all of the associated baggage. However, Ubuntu 9.10 NBR runs brilliantly. I upgraded the RAM to 2GB and put it back down to 1GB and haven't missed it.

Sadly, with the onslaught of Windows 7, it appears as though the nascent netbook market, which began with affordable computers running Linux on small SSDs, is in the process of dying. Such is life. Pick up your 2lb 9" Linux wonder while supplies last.