I agree that Apple's laptop keyboards are not very good but that's because laptops in general have crappy keyboards. I was reasonably impressed with the keys on the 13 inch unibody Macbook Pro (whereas the first generation Macbook Pros had lousy keyboards where the key tops would break off easily). Unless they have gotten worse with the new Retina models, I'd say the Apple laptops are among the least worst laptops for typing. What laptop keyboard do you like?

Does the Mac Mini have an external power brick? If so you could decide not to use the supplied power brick and power many Mac Minis from a single low-voltage supply. That would surely cut heat and power usage.

I use Windows at 200% scaling (both XP and 7) and it looks fine in pretty much every application; where are you seeing problems?

Looks like Slashdot still holds some of its power. 100,000 was reached sometime this morning 2/21/2013.

What still-alive platform has a decent C compiler (crusty K&R ones don't count), but doesn't have a port of Perl?

There are flickers you don't consciously perceive but nonetheless tire your eyes after long use. To show the effect you'd need a large randomized controlled trial. That does not mean no effect exists.

[T221s] Yup, me too, and I have mounted them in portrait format. Here's a photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7500206@N08/6851350945/

I have 1920x1440 in a 19" screen.

Sounds lovely - is it a CRT? If not what's it called? (A few years back you could get 1600x1200 LCDs but everything has become letterbox since then.)

It depends which monitor you have. A good monitor will have a wide viewing angle along both axes, but it's true that many cheaper ones are not usable in portrait format.

Get one of these and you'll be OK up to F24: http://www.ebay.com/itm/110693794545

French is the language of love!

This sounds reasonable to me - the telephone company has no business filtering phone calls, so it should not filter text messages either. Subscribers may choose to employ a spam-blocking service, which could be provided by other people than the phone company.

You can Frankenstein your laptop too... I bought a Dell and replaced the motherboard, processor and heatsink, memory, hard disk, wireless card, and part of the case. I have a replacement video card and keyboard waiting to be installed. But admittedly you cannot simply build a laptop from scratch.

Can't you just zoom in the website with Ctrl-+ and get the same effect? That's what I do on Windows with a 3840x2400 display. Admittedly some websites specify fixed pixel sizes for things so they appear scrunched into the top left corner, or in a thin dribble down the middle, but I don't see how you can fix that without violating web standards. Does the 'Retina' mode render something that says 100 pixels as 200 pixels instead?

I don't believe those airlines are subsidized directly by their respective governments. Certainly BA is a private company and is no longer particularly British (it merged with the also-privatized Iberia). It's true that national airlines or 'flag carriers' have often enjoyed special privileges, but those are usually of the kind which tend to *increase* ticket prices, not reduce them.