I openly dare you to substitute "Fox News" for "slashdot" and e-mail this to Rham Emanuel. Just to see how many watch lists you end up on ;)

Look, if we as a community can't even get some cheap shots in on the new OS how will we ever stay on "Big Steve's" Christmas Card list?

You're new around here... aren't you?

Although I agree with your point. One lesson people should have learned from the UAC debacle in Vista is that if you have a security feature which will disable or prevent something from running make sure that the user has an easily accessible way to override that decision should they so choose.

That's a little disingenuous in your price estimates. In the case of Michael Dell, he's going to be using his companies corporate site licensing for Windows and Office. Which per seat would cost a lot less than your estimates there.

Also, as they're Dell he's getting his PC at cost.

So for him this would cost substantially less.

Now, for the rest of us?
If you have three PC's in your house pick up the family pack license when it releases, that's 3 copies of home premium for $150 ($50 per PC), Or you can get the OEM system builders edition of home premium for $89 I believe. (Recent Fry's ad)
Have any college age student in your house, have them buy your Office at the Student price. (Which could also work for Windows to lower the cost)

As for the hardware, if you are actually buying a full built system chances are it's going to come with the OS on it, so you can remove the seperate OS cost.

If you're system building for yourself and are that budget conscious you can get a i5 quad core and still see most of the benefits. (As the first review of the Nehalem process you linked said :

"Basically, if you already own a Quad Core Q6600 or a higher end Dual Core CPU, upgrading to this won't improve your performance by a great degree."

In your pricing estimates you're ignoring the first rule of shopping. Never Pay Retail.

Yes, the cut off is Feb 1st.

Which means he was nominated while people were still in the international post-coital bliss of his inauguration.

As for the moon, I think the last thing we want to do it bomb them, they've been known to throw rocks back at us....

Another thing which hurt Firefly was that Fox decided to air the episodes out of order. Watch them in the boxed set and they make more sense. Fox just figured that the whole explaining things and setting up plot parts wouldn't do good for the firs episodes, so they aired one with more action first. Then apparently split what was supposed to be the premier into two parts...

You know, in that comment you can easily.... /s/Microsoft/Google

just sayin...

Obviously we're moving more and more towards convergence devices which will handle many or all of the mobile technology needs of people. But we're not at that point fully yet.

Knowing this establishing yourself as a solid contender in one venue (music/media playback) isn't a bad thing. Then put together future offerings once others have dangled around in the market and figured out what people really do and don't want.

I could see MS coming out with a version of Windows Mobile that is a "everything under one roof" approach, but probably in another year or so. Take the interface of the Zune's and put it with the backside of Windows Mobile. Forcing a convergence of these two ahead of time would probably only cause a bad product to be made. Also waiting until the Windows 7 release machine hits full force, then release a new mobile OS and tie it all together with Xbox becoming a full on media center and you have something Apple wouldn't.

I don't know about calling the RAZR a "fad that passed". That series of phones, in my experience at least, are very solid phones. Also moderately customizable if you want to get into reflashing them. I still have a V3i I keep in my desk drawer "just in case" my G1 should fritz out on me.

Of course he threw in a whole category for "Coolest name".

Hurm... think he might be a BIT predisposed to one of the competitors?

Yeah, I'm not going to say the guy was predisposed to the Mac and didn't really vet his Windows facts or anything but....

A note about "family pack" licensing. Apparently there's verbiage in the Windows license now to accommodate for this too, but I haven't seen pricing for it yet.

Would he disconnect the entire Internet if his raid was about to wipe just to avoid the repair bill.

A) Who defines a "critical system"? Whoever that is would be wielding some serious power.
B) Is the Internet itself (i.e. the backbones which carry most traffic) considered a "critical infrastructure information system"?
C) If so, they he would have the kill switch to Mae East, Mae West, etc.... That is for all effects and purposes the ability to shut down US access to the Internet.

I have heard this from many people. It's on my somewhat long "projects" list, but it was nice having a device that did what I wanted that I didn't have to build myself.