I suggest installing Ubuntu (or some derivation) and go to System-->Preferences-->Session and add a new startup item like, say, Firefox. Have Firefox defaulted to opening the sites she likes to go to. Also, auto-login her user. I basically have this setup at work where I turn on my Ubuntu machine, go pour a cup of coffee, and when I get back Firefox is open and my mail client is open.

Does lusting after all their space make me a peta-phile?

Do research on other companies who have deployed FOSS enterprise-wide. The company I currently work switched gears from a proprietary language based sites to one in Drupal. http://www.jacksonville.com/ now is ranked #4 for best newspaper site http://www.jacksonville.com/business/2009-02-09/story/jacksonvillecom_ranked_no_4_among_nations_top_newspaper_sites Using Drupal has allowed us to package a highly configurable product that we can rapidly deploy to our other business units. I suggest looking for other similar situations.

Celebrate early and often! Free parties with free beer!

I just checked and it is indeed IMAP.

I use Thunderbird at work on my Ubuntu 8.04 machine. Of all the mail clients I've tried on Ubuntu, this has worked out best for me for my specific needs which is basically hooking up to the corporate Exchange server. I wish it had a calendar (perhaps there is some sort of plugin or I'm missing something?) but I just use my Google calendar and have that displayed via my desktop date/clock bar.

This sounds more like trying to bump off your crazy Uncle but keeping him on life support. Just in case... I simply feel that users should be able to get rid of it and if they choose so in the future, they can simply download it again. What is there to gain fro it remaining on the system? He says that deselecting it for use allows users to re-enable it without need for additional media but I don't see the problem considering most adopters of the technology will likely have an always-on internet connection.

I'm not completely sold on using SSD for development (yet) as well because of the write-cycle problem but do think that the consumer SSD device in the near future will eliminate the write wear. If you must use a solid state device, I'd suggest getting one that is much larger than the projected development size and has better write cycle/wear numbers to help alleviate any premature data loss. I primarily use SSD's for backups. Any Apple Developers on a MacBook Air out there?

[Enter Nathan Hale]

Zomgz but those don't come with the bitten-apple and pre-packaged eliteness.

Perhaps Semacode wasn't the first people to do this (and provide a toolkit) but I remember having a conversation with friends nearly 2 years ago about this technology and the copyright on the Semacode site is from 2002. I guess at least there's a major backer in the technology but if I know Microsoft, they'll likely patent their encoding and force it on the world as the standard.

My comment beckons the ignorance of some regarding science - beliefs that come from bad movies and no education.