Let's hang the landlords. All of them. All proper revolutions start that way, with good reason.

Pray please? How about overgeneralising? My dad happens to be a landlord, well, he used to be. He bought apartments for his kids and he rented them out during the time we didn't need them (yet). He ALWAYS made sure that the tenants had everything they needed (something broke, he was there immediately), and the rents were below market rate. The apartment themselves, were in a good neighborhood, close to public transport, with private parking and in vicinity of a supermarket, post office, schools, pharmacy, several restaurants, and all that kind of stuff. Not cheap... Market rate would be 1300€/month cold.

Several reasons, he liked to help young families, who were able to save up a bit more and hence eventually buy their own thing quicker (which many did!). He's too kind hearted sometimes :-P. He knew that if he made money on the apartments he would have to pay exorbitant taxes on the income generated by them. So basically, he let them pay off the loan, minus a certain amount, which he chipped in and then could declare to the taxman that he was in debt and earned nothing on it.

Not all landlords are evil. Mine, being my dad, asks me nothing as rent, except that I have to put the rent I would have paid aside for eventual future use. (Which might be coming soon!)

It again boils down to the fact that real estate should be bought for the real estate itself and not for making money.

Because MSM fucked up public perception of (already unpopular) nuclear power. I'm not pro-nuclear, but I'm a realist. We need it, at least still in the short term, and we could use all the so called "waste" to produce more energy, but there is no political will to do so.

Yesterday, I talked to my FiL about this. He was anti-nuclear, but at least he was willing to listen to the explanations from the engineering stanpoint. It didn't change his opinion, but mainly because of the waste issue. He did say, that the accident moved his view to "more negative". Oddly enough, in my view it should provoke the exact opposite: it proves how safe it really is and that this was a cascade of misfortune that was pretty much well prepared for.

Two weeks ago, with MiL, it was much worse. She didn't want to listen at all, said it was Tchernobyl all over again, etc, etc, etc...

My parents? We talked about it, and we all agree on the security of these installations and we know there is a remaining risk.

The difference, my parents both have a academic education and pretty sound understanding of science. My in-laws... let's be nice... less so.

Disclaimer: I live 45km from Cattenom. I am in the dead-zone in a Tchernobyl like event.

Go with Windows 7, 64-bit Ultimate... You know you want to :-p

Seriously: Kimvette is right. Unless you want to help debug the distro always stay a bit behind. There is a reason I run Debian stable and Ubuntu LTS... and Windows XP. Yes, even for proprietary, better stay a few versions behind. I only started using XP /after/ it was in SP2 for a long time. Stayed on NT4 while 2000 was out for years.

Let the others suffer the bugs and problems... I want to do just my work/play/surf.

My dad insisted using it on native resolution (1600x1200) and 96dpi. I had more trouble at reading the screen than he did... old hawk :-P

I think we just need to agree to disagree. I don't think that current IGPs fail when using basic modern programs (Meaning, Aero/Compiz. I don't know of any "basic" program requiring a 3D graphics card except those) and do "high resolution" (Which I will define now as Full HD, which is the most common you'll find) output. In the thread you'll find plenty people defending that stance.

You prefer non IGP? Fair enough. I don't need it and I'd rather spend the saved money on something that has value to me.

I'd gladly try out Shaker on my 01/2007 laptop and get back to you.... If you want, I just won't spend money on it... I'd be very surprised if it didn't work adequately.

We're on slashdot. I am not surprised in any way that I'll find people who need extra power.

At work, I do have a better machine even that on todays standards it's still low end (Core2Duo, 4GB RAM, NVidia Quadro, got it new when I started here 2 years ago), but I also run Linux and not Windows. That makes a world in resource usage. Yes, and I do run a few VMs too. Graphics usage, however, limit themselves to compiz and the occasional Flash Game.

For non-work, well, I do basically the same... Which is run Linux and sometimes a few VMs. Sure with the 2GB RAM, I have in my personal laptop, I have to limit myself to two VMs, but it works fine. I played (and finished) World Of Goo on that machine, worked fine, but that's really about the maximum needs in the graphics department.

I also admit that I am a dumpster diver by passion and have fun at making my hardware last as much as possible saving money in the long run. Thing is, I can do exactly what you do: put myself in a coffee shop and do whatever I'd do at home. Difference is that we have different usage patterns. Now, the question here is: which usage pattern of us to is closer to the usage pattern of the normal user. I don't know...

I hope you saw the post about me admitting being wrong about the fact that the iMacs graphics card is not an IGP. I really thought it was, because I didn't realize it had dedicated memory.

Yes, I know, someone admitting on slashdot he's wrong... The riders on the apocalypse are in sight.

I agree completely... IF you need the power, THEN you need to go that way. You see, that's where all these anti IGP people are erring. Those 50€ more, are 50€ I'd rather spend on something that important to me. You see, why would I spend 50€ more for something I will not use... ever... I don't game, the IGP of a laptop is usually matched to its screen size for normal usage, and desktop effects (if you really want any) can be done with modern entry-level-IGPs.

Of course, you are talking a desktop... when you have the extra flexibility. Start off with the IGP and if you really do discover that it's not enough, plunk down 50€ and be done with it... Or 500€, doesn't matter as you will be buying a PCIe card anyway and you can (somehow) justify spending money on the performance

but it's nice to be able to support many open windows.

I'm confused. In what way does the number of windows you can have open on your desktop relates to the hardware capacities of your graphics card?!? The only way I see is resolution, and modern IGP run high resolutions quite fine.

Okay, I see... IGP means to you that it has dedicated memory, according to wikipedia, that's even correct.

Personally, we bought that iMac mainly for surf-duty, and I never intensively studied its graphics capacities. I am surprised to learn it has its own graphics memory. Good, I'm wrong on that... Still, I doubt that a ATI Radeon HD 4200 (which definitely is an integrated graphics chipset) couldn't drive a 256x1600 screen... Yup, it can... : "Primary supports 18-, 24-, and 30-bit digital displays at all resolutions up to 1920x1200 (single-link DVI) or 2560x1600 (dual-link DVI) "

You mean, I can go out and buy a new graphics card for my wifes iMac? As in an NVidia PCIe based, one? Integrated graphics mean just that: integrated in the motherboard. I just clicked on the link you gave, chose the 27" model for buying and expected to get a presented with a choice of ATI... Well, it doesn't... There is no choice, which suggests heavily that it isn't some daughterboard, but integrated on the motherboard.... IPG... Case closed.

Yes, my father had one of these too. 4:3 relation, see.. Try even finding that these days. I was looking at the consumer end (and I have been saying that from the beginning) Incidentally, I am responsible for buying laptops at my company and yes, we go with Dell. The Latitude series, which is their business range. Let me check, we want a typical 15" or so? Hmmm, lessee... E6520 (which is one of the biggest models), highest resolution available: 1920x1080. I'm not sure, you realize that, but a 1920x1080 is just 8% larger than that 1600x1200 our dads had years ago and are unfindable now. (Never mind that vertical space is worth much more while working that horizontal space)

I truly ask you where those 2560x1600 laptops you seem to find, because I most certainly don't find anything beyond 1920x1200.... And, again: modern day IGPs drive those just fine for desktop usage!

Basically your gripe is with the 945GM, which is one of the worst from Intel... and only because of that you're not even considering that the newer offerings (todays IGPs) or that Non-Intel offerings of the day may be adequate. Your information on integrated graphics is severely out of date and tainted by one of the worst graphics chipset in existence.

The high resolutions you talk about are absolutely non-typical on the range of laptops that do have integrated graphics. Go to your local geek provider and check. Laptops seem to hover around 1366x768. Typical stand alone screen is 1920x1080, simply because of economies of scale on HDTVs. My moms computer (Single core AMD Athlon 64 2800+, 2GB RAM, and.... a Geforce 4400MX, which is for all intents and purposes not better than any IGP these days) drives a 23" 1920x1080 screen just fine.

In the consumer-end, the standalone screens I see most are 1920x1080 and 1440x900. That's for NEW systems or people who replaced a screen that crapped out.

More to the point: my wifes iMac is powered by integrated graphics (pretty much everything from Apple is) and drives a 2560x1600 just fine... Incidentally, that resolution is the highest one I can find in my preferred online store at prices most consumers wouldn't spend. So, "start at around 1900x1200" sounds, let's just say a bit exaggerated.

Might it just be that your fathers laptop had other issues? It wouldn't be the first time that I see people complaining about something not working right and in the end its, either Windows that's really in a bad state, not enough RAM (A 2005 laptop? 512MB RAM... might be an issue, considering Windows XP SP3 pretty much requires 512MB RAM. Swapping takes an insane toll) or a failing harddisk. (Failing harddisk => I had that in my laptop... Ubuntu notified me about it... Replacing the HDD with another one, and suddenly the machine was very responsive again) Finally, even BIOS settings might influence it. In my laptop, there was a "Save Battery" option, disabled by default. I thought it was perhaps a good idea to turn it on. Turns out, it basically locked the CPU into 800MHz. Ooops!