Yes, if you define 'niche' as pretty much every other person who is not a 'techie', your mum, dad, grandma, kids, the 95% of the population who reads a couple of email, updates their facebook status and looks at a few photos! A sub $500 device, long battery life, can sit in your lap while you are watching tv, no reboot, patching, virus software updates makes a LOT more sense than any laptop/netbook/desktop. WE ARE THE NICHE! We are the ones who need laptop/netbook/desktop, for most people it is complicated, expensive overkill.

Purchase price is only one factor. My macbook pro will cost less over a 2-3 year period. And you will still carry around a portable mouse because the 2 the thinkpad ships with are un-usable. The multi-touch trackpad on the Mac means you never see people with a macbook using and external mouse. 3 years down the track, I will sell the macbook to upgrade - I will re-coup the difference in purchase price on resale value. How long will it take you to migrate machines? I plug my new macbook in, it detects my old one on the network, asks me if I want to copy everything (including applications) an hour later the machine is IDENTICAL to my old one - settings, files, applications!! You will spend that long getting rid of IBM crapware before you even think of how you will copy all your old files and re-installing (finding DVD's or downloading files) all of your applications. And I don't pay the Windows tax and run a virus checker. How much time over the life of the machine will you waste starting/stopping windows? My macbook is usable and connected to the network by the time I open the lid. Your machine might cost less in purchase price. But I think my total cost of ownership will end up a LOT less.

No, but you are going to have to wipe the disk then re-install a fresh Win7 to get rid of all the cr@p ware loaded on by those pre-built brand name vendors.

Make mine a mac.

The touch pad is still the best selling point. Go to a coffee shop, you NEVER see a person with a mac and an external mouse, pretty much every PC user has attached an external mouse.

Eh, no, they have just copied what Apple have been doing for however many years!!

Ask him/her about vertebral subluxation, then ask him how Simon Singh is going. A Chiroquackter is the last person you should be asking about peer reviewed, double blind, substantial number of client, research! The media got hold of this and pushed it for all it was worth. 12 people is not a large enough sample set to change practices - it might be enough for investment in further research, but it is not enough to change practices. It is just bad science

Because that is the laptop that is the most idiot proof. Things like opening and closing the lid to put it to sleep properly - and it wakes up every time - for months on end - without rebooting.

You are forgetting to add the cost of yearly virus checking software subscription. And if you have had the same windows box without a single re-build I might not think you are telling the truth. You probably do one of those about once every 18 months.

Oh, they have a specific market. It is a computing device for the rest of the population - the ones that don't understand computers, the ones that can't upgrade their os, download the latest virus checker, or actually connect to the internet on the latest bells and whistles nokia N9whatever. This is a no fuss, no hassle, no confusion, your grandmother can use it, internet/book/information delivery/multimedia device. The market is the 95% of the population that do not 'get' computers. I can see that apple are trying to do to the computer/laptop industry what they did with the phone industry and the portable music device industry. You and I don't really need one as we have 3 laptops, a netbook, a media centre and 4 desktops all dual booting - but we still might get one.

Yes, If everyone used the numbering system and start numbering with the 2nd person on the list then it could work!

The trouble with the 'get everybody else to charge' model is that there is the BBC. Which is a publicly (very well) funded body.

The BBC will ALWAYS put news content on-line for free. They see it as a service to countries without access to 'good' news sources. The BBC does not have to make money on-line.

I pay £120 a year in TV license to the BBC so you b@stards can get free news and great documentaries and period drama for free!