'Disingenuous' ... you keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means. Are you seriously comparing a *LAPTOP* processor to a *DESKTOP* processor? And I am disingenuous? You should compare it to the i5-2500K, which is cheaper and way better performing for most tasks and runs significantly cooler.

If this was 1995, I'd believe it. In 2011, Intel competes with itself. If they drive up CPU prices, they won't be able to make more and more profits because people do *NOT* need to upgrade. The vast majority of the population is doing fine on a dual core 4+ year old CPU running a browser and IM program and watching videos. Since people do not need to upgrade, but Intel has to sell more and more CPUs, their profits would collapse and then the stock and then ... hilarity ensues.

I built a Linux server/desktop earlier this year:
AM3+ motherboard (4 RAM slots, 6 x SATA 6GB ports, 2 x USB 3.0 ports): 90$
AMD 1090T six core CPU: 160$

Great performance, incredible value. Once Bulldozer gets better, I can seamlessly upgrade it. Now, I'd like to see an Intel equivalent for this.

Stone age old? My mom's desktop is an AMD Athlon 3800 x2, that's what? 6.5 years old? Motherboard is some El-Cheapo don't even remember the brand socket 939 motherboard. Ram is some old, old, very old kit. Hard drive is some crappy Sata 150. Video card is something built in the motherboard, guess what? Ubuntu 11.04 didn't complain about a single thing. Everything works.

My own desktop is a mix of 3-5 year old parts (NIC, Wifi, NVidia 7600 GS) with a more modern CPU and motherboard. All work without driver issues.

What constitutes random parts then? Walking into a store and telling the cashier: Okay, give me a random motherboard, random CPU, random hard drive, random memory stick, random network card?

I built a desktop/server running Ubuntu, assembling it took me maybe one hour tops, pieces were all random:
- Gigabyte Motherboard
- AMD 1090T
- A bunch of hard drives I had lying around.
- A 20 GB Intel SLC SSD for OS/boot.
- An old SATA card for extra ports.
- An old WiFi card.
- A low power NVidia card.

Ubuntu 11.04 detected everything, it then suggested me to install the restricted driver for the NVidia card. Only thing installer missed is the fstab settings for the SSD (noatime and discard). Didn't install in zero time, obviously, but had no hardware detection issues at all.

GMail runs great on my Home PC (Ubuntu), Laptop (Arch), Gaming PC (Windows 7), Work PC (Windows XP), iPhone and wherever I am that has an internet enabled device with a non retarded browser. Any other email programs that run on all those platforms and cost the same as GMail (free) and are as feature rich?

I just don't get the hate towards Unity. I got all my important applications hotkeyed. The icon bar has hotkey mappings too. If I have to use one non hotkeyed application, I just hit super key and start typing either description or name, and after 2-3 letters it's the first pick on the launcher. Everything is at my fingertips, notifications work well too, switcher as well, my password file is seamlessly synchronized using Ubuntu One over 4 PCs, I got out of the box support for mp3s, NVidia drivers and whatnot.

What do people who constantly rag on Unity want? I can understand they might be frustrated with some bugs, but latest release is very stable (at least for me). I am trying to understand what people miss from KDE, Gnome 2 or other DEs that Unity doesn't have or that it has implemented in a really bad way.

ORLY?