In the vast majority, over 90%, of the calls I make to people's houses to clean infected PCs the browser most often used is IE. I realize part of this is their larger market share but I also wonder if a higher percentage of regular IE users are more easily tricked into clicking on links they shouldn't.

I'll second Emacs. Emacs was mature web site development software before there were websites. How much more 'long haul' are you looking for?

Just wait until some of the machines fail and need to be replaced and the Air Force finds out they can't get what they bought anymore. Sony might want to preemptively work out an arrangement to keep from getting sued.

...this game should only be played on public terminals in internet cafes without security cameras.

BTW, is spoofing your identity fair game play at the feminists house?

Continue supporting open source solutions. As long as Unix/Linux OSes remain the dominant systems and Apache the dominant server then proprietary solutions will never win. The attempt of proprietary vendors to win is exactly what drives the community to fork and maintain open source. In the same way that BSD gave birth to FreeBSD, Open Office gave birth to Libre Office. I suspect Oracle will eventually force MySQL to fork in order to remain open but it has the momentum now to remain the dominant web DB. Freedom will prevail and that is what will make sure no one entity controls the web.

Or where you are at when disaster strikes. I live alone so there are no loved ones to save so at home it would be data, then possessions. At a loved ones house my data would not be there to save so it would be loved ones, then possessions.

Just wondering. Maybe all OSes are at the end of their life cycle...

The eee1005 isn't bad either. I run Xubuntu on mine. The XFCE desktop responds well. Of course if I just pop into a hotspot to check mail or something quick I just run Splashtop since it boots in about 10 seconds :)